My hands

The coloured hands in red and blue

Stand stark against the flowers

The pastel paint feels thick and cloying

On my skin.

I give you my body to anoint

You give me colours, I wrote,

To see that now this image is real

Your world through my painted hands

Moulded in your image

For your eyes and for the world

As they move through the still life 

Created in front, in your space.

The artist soul speaks to my hands

You move them in the soft light

Sticky and blue and red

Drying under the heat of the lamps

Flakes drop and crack to your delight.

I am not a piece of fruit or flower

My still life beckons at your call

To be an image on film

Hidden slivers of silver

Waiting for the breaking light

To reveal my hand as structure 

Older and bigger than I shall ever be.

I turn my hands under your gaze

The lens on fire

Shutter cracks, frozen time is made

As movement and colours dance in tune

Under your rhythmic eye.

My hands twist in new shadow

They laugh and smell the flowers

And lick the fruit of our joyful evening

Sharing a dream that we have become

Images of love, 

Hand in hand.