By day a burnt land, by night a dark woman.
He watched and walked his listless, arid land day by day
By night it cooled, became his warm woman --
She lay with her face unchanged
Her smile, her mouth; set in a gentle ripple
She was the terrain, the land, and the fields
And hills he loved, he knew her every undulation;
The shape of the further side of her curved outline
Crests of her body turned to one side; hills breathing in twilight.
He would put the smile of the day on the dawn’s early light
That shone down over hills, put the smile
On her calm dark face also; eyes and mouth simply closed
Over unspoken moments, sentiments held from a private place.
When they made love, he followed the slow
Furrows, under his gliding fingertips
Her flesh, her hips, her breasts, her lips returned
To their same sunlit form, her bodies’ memory
Her hills and valleys folded back, unclothing her mystery; her breasts
Brought memory, curving brazenly, twinned ellipses under the sun --
Between their cleft he buried his head in acceptance and pleasure --
After her long cry came and went and her eyes opened
From an azure depth of her being; in the flicker of her eyes
He saw the river many times; silent -- lazing along under the trees
A green glow, a stillness shifting in shade -- now as she
Sits on the edge of the bed he watches her breathing giving
Hints; the movement of dimples; like soft eyes that still cannot see
Her breasts lolling, he cannot help but think to touch again
Her hips, bunched -- his wrists know well, his fingers also the arabesque of her spine
And he sees what the earth has rounded and ripened, and so quietly given
The land, once dry, become a vision of curves and abundance.
Luke Whitington.
