Monday, March 22, 2004
Naked to Naked Goes
In the Botanical Gardens
I have come here
to see you naked.
To witness your hidden
geometry of passion
laid bare, here,
in this winter's time.
The brilliant hues of summer
have vanished--
the shimmering pinks
and blazing blood-orange reds,
the boisterous yellows
and radiant peacock blues--
all have faded,
melted into
the earth's pale mouth,
leaving behind this stark revelation,
the denuded underpinnings of desire.
Before me the slender needles
of this reedlike plant
gather and thrust upward
in a bold rapture of grey and white
like an arrangement
in a still life set free,
splinters of liquid light
lifting against the sky.
I pause and marvel
at this muted bliss,
unclothed conspiracy of all
things which remain
and rise in joy.
Yeats said truth arrives
when naked to naked goes.
Something releases deep within.
I am shedding my garments
as I go.
Dorothy Walters, January 21-31, 2004
copyright, Dorothy Walters
I have come here
to see you naked.
To witness your hidden
geometry of passion
laid bare, here,
in this winter's time.
The brilliant hues of summer
have vanished--
the shimmering pinks
and blazing blood-orange reds,
the boisterous yellows
and radiant peacock blues--
all have faded,
melted into
the earth's pale mouth,
leaving behind this stark revelation,
the denuded underpinnings of desire.
Before me the slender needles
of this reedlike plant
gather and thrust upward
in a bold rapture of grey and white
like an arrangement
in a still life set free,
splinters of liquid light
lifting against the sky.
I pause and marvel
at this muted bliss,
unclothed conspiracy of all
things which remain
and rise in joy.
Yeats said truth arrives
when naked to naked goes.
Something releases deep within.
I am shedding my garments
as I go.
Dorothy Walters, January 21-31, 2004
copyright, Dorothy Walters
