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At The Remembrance Of Your First Time
As long as memory allows and consists,
I shall remember and celebrate
(I shall celebrate and revere)
the remembrance of that first experience,
how it was for you, and for me watching you
without the interference of inhibited others.
Mid-afternoon, we had returned from a tour,
walking along the edge of the parking lot
beside the hotel's enormous swimming pool---
its shallower end no deeper than needed for wading.
You paused at that moment and your shy smile
was like the first resonance of a poem
before the pen is put to paper,
and before its place in canon is considered.
Dressed casually---tank top, and long-hemmed skirt,
and a pair of ordinary pantyhose
(sheer, tan, with reinforcements at the toes---
despite what fashion magazines propose),
you slipped your chunky platform sandals off
and laid them aside. Then, lithely, you passed
through the gated fence and over to the
shallows, to the smooth, broad, circular, concrete
stairs, below the surface. You stepped down, into
water that engulfed your stockinged feet,
lapping at your ankles as its dampness
climbed up the nylon. Then you stepped down
again, and yet again, two feet to the bottom,
your skirt, although held up, darker in hue
as you moved, delightedly laughing, through the water,
its level still below your knees. I believe
every eye around the pool was watching you,
especially those who saw, at first, your
abandoned platform sandals. My eyes,
adept in adoration of your beauty
(yet always gladly a novice, eager to learn more)
did not resent these others' gazes that
can never profane your poetic perfection.
You seemed to be intensely fascinated
by this effect---your sheer-sheathed feet in water---
the effect upon you, as well as upon others
surrounding you, and upon me. Your look
was utterly enigmatic: innocent
as to effect, knowledgeable as to intent.
Momentarily, the whole universe
paused to center itself around you,
to become the water that inundated
your shoeless stockinged feet, and to hold you
ever so much more momentous than
even the newest blazing star emergent
out of the galaxy's iridescent core,
where light---illuminant and unlimited---
enfolds upon itself in undulations of color.
Starward
[jlc]
