You sat for my camera
just the once
in a Mediterranean garden.
It was a haven of green
above a sunned-blue bay.

Unplanned it was.
We’d eaten lunch,
watching butterflies
flicker-perch and hover.

You’d tied your hair with a scarf
to keep the midday heat from your head,
a sun that brought your freckles to the fore
on bare arms, on your golden cheek.

Then, for a little while,
you left your public self elsewhere,
and my zoomed lens travelled close
as a lover’s kiss before waking.

And as you gazed at the daisied grass
a gentleness and grace descended
on your sun-shadowed face.

I took two pictures, only two.

These portraits I’ve not kept
with other ‘snaps’,
but far apart;  and possibly
close to the painter’s art
as I will ever get.

The portrait-call goes out.
I hesitate, I’m reticent, afraid
to share them with the public gaze.
They say so much, you see,  
of what I know you now to be:
the woman I’m privileged
to touch, to hold dear and close
to this wholly unmanageable heart.