Jewel Box

Your jewel box of white balsa strips
and bleached green Czechoslovakian rushes 
stands open where you keep it shelved 
in the bathroom. Morning and evening 
I see you comb its seawrack tangle of shell, 
stone, wood, glass, metal, bone, seed 
for the bracelet, earring, necklace, brooch 
or ring you need. Here's brass from Nepal, 
a bangle of African ivory and chased silver 
for your wrist, a twist of polished
sandalwood seeds, deep scarlet,
gleaming like the fossil tears
of some long-gone exotic bird
with ruby crest, sapphire claws. Adriatic 
blue, this lapis lazuli disc will brighten 
the pale of your throat, and on this small 
alabaster seal-ring the phantom of light 
inscribes a woman tilting an amphora, clear 
as day, almost as old as Alexander. To the 
ebony velvet brim of your hat you'll pin 
a perfect oval of abalone, a dark-whorled 
underwater sheen to lead us to work 
this foggy February morning. We'll leave 
your nest of brightness in the bathroom 
between the mirror and the laundry-basket 
where my dirty shirts sprawl like
drunks amongst your skirts and blouses. Lace-
work frills and rainbow silk pastels, your panties 
foam over the plastic brim, and on the shower-rail 
your beige and talc-white bras dangle by one strap 
like the skinned Wicklow rabbits I remember 
hanging from hooks outside the victuallers' 
big windows. We've been domesticated strangely, 
love, according to our lights: when you
walk by me now, naked and not quite dry 
from the shower, I flatten my two hands 
on your wet flank, and wonder at the tall 
column of flesh you are, catching the faint 
morning light that polishes you pale as 
alabaster. You're warm, and stay a moment 
still like that, as though we were two planets 
pausing in their separate orbits, pendant,
on the point of crossing. For one pulse-stroke 
they take stock of their bodies
before returning to the journey. Dressed, 
you select a string of chipped amber
to hang round your neck, a pair of star-shaped 
earrings, a simple ring of jet-black
lustrous onyx. Going down the stairs and 
out to the fogbound street, you light my way.