Author Information
At The Top Of My E-mail
[with thanks to Lady Shane]
Poet, you should describe for us
a session in the studio,
a brief parenthesis of light and leisure,
and the shared affection of three friends
before they must return to
the shadowed disappointments of their mundane lives.
Show the room illuminated
by gentle candlelight, and the glow
of a warm fire behind the grate:
in one corner, the erstwhile painter, sketching;
in another corner, the student prince, learning;
and in the room's center, the model, posing
(Mary; Marissa, she likes them to call her)
not nude, not stripped of her clothes as the world seeks,
but clad in the silk peignoir that she loves,
and putting on---then joyously modeling---
new, sheer-silk stockings (make them gray
with reinforcements at the toes;
that will keep the fashion mavens furious).
Listening to Billy Ocean's song,
"Love Really Hurts Without You,"
I have music that she did not have
as I imagine how it must have been for her:
stockings for their own sake---sheer, silk stockings,
expensive, purchased that day by her friends
for her enjoyment. She had never thought
of stockings as more than a garment,
part of the foundation of the modesty
required, at least on the street, of a prostitute,
or a fine, nobly titled lady
(a paradox most certainly in that);
or as something expensively flimsy
that crude men like to tear and rip away,
in their obsession with one, sole intent.
But these are hers by which she may explore
the beauty of her legs more beautifully;
the glide of silk-sheathed footsteps on the floor
(for who would hide such loveliness in boots?),
the sibilance of motion as she turns
her legs, or flexes them, or take a pose---
stretched out, curled up, sprawled in a chair,
or dangling them off of the table's edge.
Bare-legged and barefoot on Ireland's grass,
when dew-drenched then sun-warmed, had often been
a sensual delight in teenaged years;
but nothing like the almost rapturous bliss
(softness, warmth, translucence, and a sense
of floating without care) of stockinged feet.
A multitude of variations demonstrate
the pleasure that these stockings bring to her,
the effervescent enthusiasm with
which every moment is conveyed before
their gaze. The lesson?--a kinetic sketch,
not still life, but active, exuberant,
a moment lost in time, yet still recalled
upon those pages, and their memories.
Describe this, for us, Poet, in your lines.
Starward
[jlc]
