Indigo Fruit

Indigo Fruit

She stands
after the shower
naked
at the basin, slowly
wrapping her long
wet
hair in a towel
that she curls and
folds
into the blue turban that
grows like a
seashell above her.
 
I drink in the
view
of her from
behind,
lost in the play of
shadow on her
back, the soft
swell
of hips, tapering legs
below, rivulets of
water moving
downward on the
skin.
 
Standing nude, a pastel
Carmen Miranda, her
hands adjust the
indigo fruit
coiled in the
dark blue towel
atop her head,
breasts
stand reflected in the mirror,
rolling with the
movement of her arms
as she winds the towel,
skin
pale and marble-like
in the soft light
of the vanity.
 
She dons a
robe and
with the light now
dimmed, sits near me
on our bed, where I slide the
robe off the shoulders and
down her back. For
a brief moment,
stillness reigns, then
indigo fruit
cascades over a
marble still life and
slowly she
descends to me,
wet
hair and skin
against my face, the soft
scent
of ripeness in the air,
and we both come
undone.

(this poem appeared in the Wilderness House Literary Review volume 4/4, December 2009)