'With Oranges' and other poems

by Doug Tanoury
© 2001

I thought today of her awakening
Her movements a shadow
In the predawn darkness
A phantom floating
No more than a chimera of shape
A nude that Picasso might sketch
No more than a few sloping lines that curve
Toward soft inclines and rise gently
Toward feathered intersections
And fall toward full divergence
Backlit in silhouette from the bedroom window
Her breasts and buttocks
The simple elegance of lines in
Erotic waves and fluid motion

And as she moves near
I smell the citrus of orange slices
That is the fragrance and scent
That forms a perfumed wake as she passes
And the "sh" and "ch" sounds of her dressing
Are a bird's wings flapping
A slight rustling of fabric
A finch in the shrub
I am the slave of her motion
The serf of her smells
The prisoner of her naked beauty
Who wakes each morning in bondage
To the changing shape of curves
To the texture of delicate sound
And a still life with oranges

 

And I Am

 

And I told her
Matter of factly
That indeed I am
A poet of naked breasts
And that umber nipples
Centered in amber aureoles
To me are pupils
And Irises that serve
As windows to the soul

And I went on to say
Confident and self-assured
That I am too the bard
Of the bare thigh
That to me is nature revealed
Tan like the underside
Of sycamore leaves in fall
Softly wild and untouchable
As a sleeping doe

And I concluded by saying
That I am a lyric that can versify
The plump lushness of
A pale ass
In still-life form
Like so much fruit
As if it were a honey dew melon
Sliced in two and resting
On the kitchen table

 

 

In the dim light of December Afternoons
She is a shadow moving from bath to bedroom
Wearing twilight

Like a loose robe that falls open to reveal
A silhouette of breasts a dark profile of legs
Curved thighs

The touch of her still wet hair against my cheek
That afterbath scent of jasmine surrounding
Her skin

As I capture a shadow odalisque stretching over me
By breathing in and holding her deep within
My chest