"disrobe"

The world approaches reality
like a supplicant, when your soft gray robe
rolls in tumbled folds,

cinched uninsistently
at your waist, making layers of parting cloud
- and the creamy rose sky of you
lies beneath, invincibly endlessly
modest and proud as the humblest thunderstorm
must be, cloaking you,
placing its stitchings
of lightning strikes

where they must touch ground.

Untrembling hands reach out, to slide
from your shoulders and cast it down
- knowing full well that death is the price,
to tempt to embrace so much life. Let us go,
full willing into that good night, but not yet.
Not now, knowing so much day

remains to be made in this light sliding free
and sleek, still wet from the lowering cloud,
and the glow of you grows as you shine on me,

as if anything this close to paradise is allowed.