No other sky could hold such light,
not this afternoon outside Notre Dame
where the glow casts all of Paris
in Rodin’s marble studio. The woman
with skin like an unspoken word,
the cool shale of her cheek bones hold
a history of crowns, her mouth a poppy
above the pointed chin and her shoulder-length hair
a shadow of a Montmartre night. Just there
she slips past my window
as I sip the creamy surface
of my café au lait that mingles
with the apple’s breath of tarte tartin.
The taste of her lingered in my bones,
not lust but a memory of light,
the delicate walk that holds a city
in the body – the stride
of her gait, stopping there,
just there – and everything she passes
moving through the rue of her legs.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 17, Issue 2.
Lois P. Jones’s poems have won honors under judges Kwame Dawes, Fiona Sampson, Ruth Ellen Kocher and others. She is the winner of the 2012 Tiferet Poetry Prize and the 2012 Liakoura Prize and a multiple Pushcart nominee. Lois is Poetry Editor of Kyoto Journal, host of KPFK’s Poets Café (Pacifica Radio) and co-host of Moonday Poetry.
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