A fine, a Private by Diane Ackerman

A fine, a Private by Diane Ackerman
Video sent by hartistry

He took her one day
under the blue horizon
where long sea fingers
parted like beads
hitched in the doorway
of an opium den,
and canyons mazed the deep
reef with hollows,
cul-de-sacs, and narrow boudoirs,
and had to ask twice
before she understood
his stroking her arm
with a marine feather
slobbery as aloe pulp
was wooing, or saw the octopus
in his swimsuit
stretch one tentacle
and ripple its silky bag.

While bubbles rose
like globs of mercury,
they made love
mask to mask, floating
with oceans of air between them,
she his sea-geisha
in an orange kimono
of belts and vests,
her lacquered hair waving,
as Indigo Hamlets
tattooed the vista,
and sunlight
cut through the water,
twisting its knives
into corridors of light.

His sandy hair
and sea-blue eyes,
his kelp-thin waist
and chest ribbed wider
than a sandbar
where muscles domed
clear and taut as shells
(freckled cowries,
flat, brawny scallops
the color of dawn),
his sea-battered hands
gripping her thighs
like tawny starfish
and drawing her close
as a pirate vessel
to let her board:
who was this she loved?

Overhead, sponges
sweating raw color
jutted from a coral arch,
Clown Wrasses
hovered like fireworks,
and somewhere an abalone opened
its silver wings.
Part of a lusty dream
under aspic, her hips rolled
like a Spanish galleon.
Her eyes swam
and chest began to heave.
Gasps melted on the tide.
Knowing she would soon
be breathless as her tank,
he pumped his brine deep within her,
letting sea water drive it

http://satterthwaite.info/Poetry/afineaprivateplace.html