BUTTONS

I wonder nearly every time
you step out that bathroom door
top button open on your
jeans no shirt

head a mass of damp curls
a tiny rivulet of water running
down your neck down
across your chest through curls of hair

I love to scratch the itch in my fingertips
in that hair down to belly flat and taut
where the hair changes gets straighter
dances out in lines from the center

makes an arrow pointing to what's
there behind the buttons
I've watched you here like this
a thousand times each time

a rush of blood and heat begins
deep in the seashell where
I always hear your ocean where
my cells remember your shape

the smooth hard flesh of you
moist and scrubbed the scent of Old Spice
where I want to undo all those buttons
want you once again to undo me.

© Joan Barton, 1999

Next...

Back to The Poems.