On a Picture of a Nude Reclining

The sheen of folded draperies
warm resplendent curves of your bronze
bright body. Your smile an ever
present remembrance, suggest
joyous eyes that never weep.

Through the meagre apertures
of half-hid windows, blue skies burst
and grow their light upon your breast,
the stilled image grasping at my loins
evoking half-lit fantasies

never dreamt of in your head.
Your strange unnatural silence
rather than offending, draws me
trance-like to your wood framed
world. My staring -your silence

causes the consciousness I feel
to achieve in this encounter
the bewilderment of knowing;
you in the painting, the self twice known
I in my shell. a pearl-like stone.

© TonyAshenden