Catalogue as landscape

if, when the wife is sleeping
the air hangs above her
full of particles in a sun-driven dance,
setting fire to the blazing whorl of an ear
it is wise to inhale and reflect,
to get your bearings.
then, subsequently,
it is best to admire the shoulder,
gilded by the early edge of light.
next comes the spreading atlas:
the delicate ionic column of her neck,
its generous scapus,
like the primrose’s stalk,
carefully inlaid with the burgeoning pearls
of her spine,
a curve here, a curve there,
and then then a fluting merge
with the echinus of her shoulders.

while you ponder the perplexity
of the cultured hyoid bone,
that you will never see, but can still admire,
as it makes her tones so tight and exact,
a careful dance between honey and gall,
your gaze might then continue.
it can travel down to the butterfly dorsal spread:
to the curved muscles and ligaments
constituting her back,
to the delicate fretwork and intaglio
of her middle, then lower spine.
you might then look towards the hips,
healthily honed, smooth, rising here, sloping there.
their clinging drapery accentuates the torsion
of her vitruvian architecture,
less durable but still lasting;
resisting time’s dust and shadows:
a monument of blood and flesh and bone.
you list the three modes of perfection:
firmitas, utilitas, venustas—
clicking them off with your tongue.
they are all here.

but now, a shift,
the indistinct swell of hips
has become a tuscan panorama:
maremma: wild climbing roses, rising sand dunes,
piombino: yellow gorse, a blush of pink thistles,
the metalliferous hills and limestone massif,
a silver craggy crown for gerfalco,
punta falcone: there, the violet crest, and here, the hawthorn vale,
low meadowed slopes, lower mountain spreading.

then, it is the violaceous blue-veined ankle:
a round, fragile thing,
with its sudden hill and sudden valley.
a confusion of ligaments
that only together can bind,
to encourage their rigid strictures.

finally, you have the pale plum
of a late blooming heel
that is best to see at dusk.
the tawny sand dunes of twilight’s end,
and then the final image that lasts:
fading trees dripping back
into the thickening evening light,
waning moon, then black. then black.