After the Moment of her Undressing

Nude, slipping into herself,she steps out of the offices of her past.In the crook of her right armshe cradles the child of her breast,her right thigh thrust into sensuousness.In the lamplight she has come to this:a fascination of bone, a slenderness of wrists.She is Isis, Ibis, Iris, This.

II

In this painting,notice how she looks west,the absence of her daughtersan infiltration of blue moments.So what does she remember?Cartwheels on the lawn, the saffronmoments of iridescent love?Late afternoon, and the light teems.There are small shudderingsin the limbs beneath the leaves.The woman’s blue, the afternoonis bright, memory’s green: eacha sharp stroke in a single scene.

III

Why can’t a path without a woman remember?Why can’t a background lean in?If so, what would they say to each other?Would they speak of the liliesa woman once brought to this water? Or the arousals she spent in these woods?All shadowed now by her absence.But the pond, the pond chromaticwith memory, the grass a green inventory,including that of a suitor,the one who first lay in her bed.