Aleyt Goyaerts van den Meerven Looks Out at the Garden of Earthly Delights From Within the Peachy Marriage Chambers, by Caitlin Palo

The Garden of Earthly Delights, by Hieronymus Bosch (Netherlands) between 1480 and 1505

Aleyt Goyaerts van den Meerven Looks Out at the Garden of Earthly Delights From Within the Peachy Marriage Chambers
 
My dear Jeroen, most beloved, most desiring,
I look out into the garden, a monarch at the thistle
pricked by the thorn and stunned in the azure. I hear 
grapes succulent, slurped, sipped from the palm
of your hand which fingers so deftly, arc the carmine
and the madder lake across the bather’s breasts.
I lean toward the waters parting, long to float back
unencumbered, grasp my wrist and flick your feather
across my tongue. Stun me with open skies
spread my legs like wings for it is holy we are
married you may put your beak on my thigh and peck me 
put flowers in me pull music from my guts.                                            
      
I want for nothing but want. Sentinel of our good fortune, 
sentry of obedience, protector against incursions: the stork
guards against the open mouth of hunger. Why, when all the saints
have covered their faces with petals and clam shells
am I secluded, sight my only sensation? In the first garden
I held the rounded fruit in my palm; it nestled
and I pressed it to your mouth, juice trickling down
my hands your lips my chest your but think not of this
I am trapped inside, I am the stone that seeds the next,
hard, unfleshed, while all the world’s a garden in riotous summer.
 
Caitlin Palo
 
Caitlin Palo practices poetry, gardening, and martial arts in Seattle, where she earned her PhD in English from the University of Washington. Her day job is supporting research in the humanities.