Touch: Celebrating Sensual Self-love
Ekphrastic poetry — inspired from art
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She blooms,
blooms as she touches,
blooms as she touches herself
blooms bouquets of scarlet-streaked lilies, flesh like petals
blooms deep-hued violets, whispers of honeysuckle, as she meets fingers with secret skin
blooms eloquent roses in tints of cockleshell, blooms pinks of tender blushes; she blooms
She dares to hold a mirror to herself; sees her fingers are like rays of sunlight kissing her ecstasy of petals, opening in sighs; unfurling in longing; she sees, shyly. how her nether flower inhales, exhales; yet this shyness is like a maiden’s, yearning truly to be seen
As she touches in wonderment, she knows for the first time, what her lover sees; from her depths, rushes a flood of nectar, glazing her flesh with honey; breathing deep now, her posy is moss and wildflower, shaded forest floors, night-blooming jasmine showering in scatters of pale gardenia, amidst dark tendrils of hair curled like fern fronds; it seems she feels her sex sigh, enraptured,as she sends her fingers a-gliding, a-hiding, reappearing in the mirror, glossed and bedewed
She tastes herself, syrup upon her tongue, she is sweetly sharp, like the cries erupting from her, oh she is swirls of desire, undulating dervishes of delight; she is Aphrodite, Freyja, Innana, how magnificent, her sex, in its dance, to harness so much power and pleasure
The mirror, round reflects her lover’s eye, her love for her Self, and as she opens in release, floods in earthy ecstasy, she is both sunlight and rain, nourishing herself; she blooms
She stretches, opens a window; on the floor, lie the weary brown husks of once-ingrained shame, frail enough
for a stray breeze to blow silently away, like yeserdays dust
In her mind’s eye, now, an imprint of her sex in all its carnal delicacy
She blooms, knowing
She need not fear herself any longer
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© Melissa Coffey 2013 (Revised 2021)
This poem is dedicated to all women who are engaged at any stage in the journey of leaving behind shame associated with our body or sexuality and embracing deeper self-love and sexual self-acceptance.
Notes: “The Maiden”, a painting by Gustav Klimt, is also known by the title “The Virgin”. Given the slight contradiction in the meanings of the titles, I decided to take the original meaning of “virgin” which is all one with the meanings of “maiden” to depict a young woman in the “bloom” of her sexuality, who is exploring her body and sexual responses; who can enjoy unabashed self-pleasure, and wants to “see what her lover sees”.
Although the painting title is singular, Klimt was said to have wanted to represent the different phases of a woman, from virgin, to sexual blossoming, to maturity and crone. The organic central shape, reminiscent of a bud; her multiple selves as petals, enfolded about the central figure. In the poem, I extend this idea to experiencing not only a muliplicity of sexual selves, but also various Goddess energies. This website on Klimt’s work expresses it beautifully:
“It may be a complete world in female form and organic pattern. The virgin’s gown configured with many spirals metaphorically indicates fertility, continual change and the evolution of the universe.”
Desiring a shape for the poem reflected in nature, I use an ascending /descending Fibonacci sequence (0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21/ 13,8,5,3,2,1,1,0) in a different way than usual — for line structure per verse, rather than syllables per line. For zero, I’ve used a parentheses with “nothing” inside — which visually also could represent a woman’s “nether flower.”
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