Egg tempera on gesso panel, 1994
Taut prose stripped bare
His skin stretched by time, the relaxed lines
Of muscle underneath still
Firm as he sits
Nude on the highest
Tread of the little staircase before the stacks, his body
Twisted reaching upwards for another volume
Titian, Signorelli, Raphael
Emblematic
Forces you always draw upon, mastery one more way for his
Torqued form to know you by, though by now any
Pose you return him to is
Signatory
Comfortable, his eyes scanning books irregularly sized with brightly
Coloured spines he loves to touch, your brushstrokes witty
Uninvasive as the heart’s quiet
Punctuation
Eggshells cracking while he reads, yolks warmed gliding
From palm to palm, each squeezed
White-free from the snug
Privacy
Of its membrane into pigment, droplets of water added until balance
Is found so, once dry, nothing crumbles, so he won’t
Crumble, this exposed man
Almost forty
Years with you still more textured, layered, in this instance reaching
Forever across the ages, fingers poised to leaf through
Naked potential
Legacies of the written.
