For what seems like forever to his aging limbs

though not to his peregrine eyes,

he has hunched over his tripod

waiting for butterfly eyelids to lift,

hoping they might lift while the mist still muzzles

the ingressing light off the lake.

 

He waits, he watches through his chosen lens

as beautifully she breathes through parted lips

that will purse when she awakens.

Tendril fingers cross her breast.

Tangled strands of tawny hair coil about her neck,

splay across her pillow.

Mussy hair that will succumb

when painting’s daylight duty comes.

 

Through fluttering lace curtains,

red sun suffuses lake mist

before the earliest bird twitters. Twitch –

her feather eyelids twitch, and slowly –

agonizing how slowly, adoring how slowly,

forgetting how slowly, he remembers to wait –

eyelids rise revealing crescent, prescient eyes

dazzled by a dreamt mirage

that eludes the crouching man’s camera.

Snap, the shutter. She hears it snap.

From behind his tripod he emerges

slightly bent, sweetly deferential:

“Coffee, my dear, a slice of last night’s dessert?”

Smiling demurely, she drifts toward the desert.

— Poet magazine, 1992, published as “A Portrait, 1918”