Artist and Lover

Like a blackbird’s, her head jerks up
from the lawn of canvas before her.
Eyelashes flick, eyes snatch some feature

of my face. The tongue of paint on the tip
of the brush is a part of me,
wet with a deep-from-the-earth moisture.

A model now, not her lover,
apprehensive that she might discover
an unfamiliar character,

I disintegrate wholly
to the beak of her imagination.
Until I am a worm in her mind’s clover.

Yet painting and love are similar:
for love, too, is interpretation
and a formal diminution of the body.