To a woman I had often seen in her bath.

She visits her nudity everyday like a razor in a house of glass; I watch her slide a hand along her thigh, extinguish a mass of hiding bubbles, she lets the silk of still water warm her, her neck thrown back, her hair afloat. In this moisture she is of all things sweet and surfeitto desire. Solitary, she creates a realm where pleasure is primary. Degas once painted such a woman in preparation to bathe–a silver tub, a gold wood floor; there was no water yet, and she stood alone, still owned by needs to ready and prepare. In my mind, however, I have always lent her violets and the coming future, the settling of limbs, the way that heat would cling right to her bones, The chill of air over her hardening,unsubmerged nipples, and the reverie in her imagining a lover’s lips on them, for they are wet and pronounced, ready to be lathed by tongues as she lounges in the place where her fantasy is succulent. And the water serves to cradle her, the softest, most needless thing she’sever known, that embryonic place where she has gained relief without cost, and in it, revels, making love to her soul’s self. Of all things this may be a ritual Before service or suicide, A preface to her day or an endless night Where she may meet love's embrace Or deaths cold delight. But this is where she can calmly pronounce the wonders that make her a woman. For her beauty here remains coerced in lather No matter how much time strikes