These wings were my passport to nakedness.
They are not angel’s but fairy’s wings.
The paintbrushes and pigments he uses on them
persuade me that joy can be squeezed
in drops out of my skin into your eyes,
so you love me as long as my young body
lasts in his frame — long as anyone knows.
The blue fall of water silk over my arm covers my legs
and Venus’s mound in a shimmering smoke shift.
In the moony studio light, I am really like that
but the woodbine and violets are normal sized flowers
scaled up into giants to make me look small.
My hair a steady spray of gold so the veil and my tresses
suggest moon and sun curling gently upon one another.
I know my nipples surpass the perfection of any bud.
I plant my feet firmly down on the leaf’s fringe
but they run down the beach of his looking
and flutter kick through the wondering tide in his eyes,
behind to wherever your thoughts find a place
with Titania unclothed —
her wings in your face.
