I think of you as a model
and I a painter I am not.
For you, my love,
carry stillness
I only wonder at.
I paint you naked on our bed,
imagine how I’d take this line of thigh,
that curve of breast, those dark shadows
of the lower back, a perfect ear,
a curl of hair, all and more
and because, and only when . . .
And after, then
we sit together
formally, at a concert:
there you are
all dressed in stillness.
Motionless your skirt
falls across a quiet knee
to a booted leg, you so rich
in graciousness and charm
that only the flow of a woman’s
costume holds for the painter’s eye.
Oh, and that warm confidence
born of a body, loved, admired,
always wondered at;
but whose senses so alive
to syllables’ speech,
to movements’ play.
Therefore with my restless hand
I, for whom stillness is a foreign land,
hold this pen and scratch this page
to write you into each and every phrase,
all and every word and line.