Unnatural Positions (Poetry)

Below the slender snow line of her waist
young flesh lies frozen, skin stretched arctic-pure
round perfect limbs locked tight in attitudes
impassive, set deceptively demure.

Her body in two halves - the lively part
grows restless, cultivates a private rage
resentful of each failure to respond
and leave the two-wheeled leg-trap of her cage.

And every love song, every book she reads
infects with romance, sets her mind on fire,
and regions that are doomed to ice age thrall
melt freely in quick fiction-bred desire.

Naive imagination spins its tale:
true love restores sensation's sweetest pain,
the ache within her floods in tidal waves
as hunger burns with hope's defiant flame.

* * * * * *

She met him on a pilgrimage to Lourdes -
her paraplegic prince with soulful smile,
who fired a tender fantasy and shared
the silent pangs of physical denial.

He laid his body on her like a balm,
skin-soothing, and the heat that they produced
was stimulus enough to satisfy
both passions simultaneously seduced.

Unconventional and clumsy, novice-shy,
their unnatural positions lack control,
but love is unconditional - she knows
he thinks of her as beautiful and whole.