Steve Dimeo

Forest Nude

Peeks & Valleys - October 01, 2004

Forest Nude W e bought her two years ago because she went with the three-tiered waterfall we added to the north side of our back yard in front of the stand of cedar trees that blocked off encroaching neighbors. But I got her more because in her pose, arms cocked at angles behind her head as if to call attention to hair angeling down in ropy strands that coiled about her breasts as she sat there, legs scissored out beneath her, she looked so much like you naked– the same sylph-like proportions to her body, even her face bearing a stylized resemblance.

Now as the cedars have risen and thickened, reaching out here and there with a branch or two as if for modesty, she mocks me. She has stayed fetchingly the same, a dark viridian stone cold to the touch, while I’m left with only the outrage of living without my real forest nude here in the interior bower of our home. I have only the oak urn beside your mantel portrait, a constant reminder how alone I am with nothing but the cold tombstone of my heart you molded in your image.

Published in Peeks & Valleys, 4, #4 (October, 2004), 15.