The White Scut of Her Bottom

 

Swimming in the Woods

By Robin Robertson

 

Her long body in the spangled shade of the wood
was a swimmer moving through a pool:
fractal, finned by leaf and light;
the loose plates of lozenge and rhombus
wobbling coins of sunlight.
When she stopped, the water stopped,
and the sun re-made her as a tree,
banded and freckled and foxed.

 

Besieged by symmetries, condemned
to these patterns of love and loss,
I stare at the wet shape on the tiles
till it fades; when she came and sat next to me
after her swim and walked away
back to the trees, she left a dark butterfly

Today Saturday was a satisfying day. There were no teenage conflicts, no computer breakdowns and the four of us (Rosemary, our daughter Hilary and her daughter Lauren) sad down for dinner. There was a nice fire in the den. The menu consisted of my Shepherd’s Pie. The recipe is a tad complicated. I grill the ground meat in the barbecue after I coat the meat with molasses. I also grill a couple of red peppers moistened with olive oil. I cut up an onion and grind up a garlic clove. I finish this off on a fry pan while I make mashed potatoes (with cream and butter). While the meat is cooking I pour about a cup of liquid that is made up of a bit of soy sauce, mustard, ketchup and chopped olives. Once the pie is ready for the oven I grind a lot of good Romano Cheese and mix it with finely chopped onion. Rosemary made a salad and I prepared some corn on the cob. Our drink consisted of fresh orange juice blended with canned peaches. Dessert (Lauren demurred) consisted of fried bananas. At the last moment I decided against firing it up with Calvados.

The evening’s film was Robert Altman’s beautiful and awfully realistic ballet/modern dance film (2003) The Company. I had seen it before so I knew that Lauren, who is a keen balletomane, would enjoy it. We all did.

After taking the two home I settled on the bed with Rosemary to read the Sunday NY Times which is delivered on Saturdays around 9.

In the Book Review I found a page with the portrait of a man (Scottish poet Robin Robertson) who resembles John Irving. I read the review and I was flabbergasted by the intensity of image of this man’s poems about women, their bodies and I guess,sex.

One of my peculiar delights is to illustrate poems I like with photographs from my files. I realized quickly that I have not photographed too many women in forest environments (Swimming in the Woods) and the second one from Venery “the white scut of her bottom” left me in a quandary. I narrowed it down to the two photographs you see here. In order to “filter out” some of the bits I scanned the b+w negatives (from the bottom part of the scanner) with a sheet of smoky paper I purchased at Opus last month.

I believe I will have to buy Sailing the Forest – Selected Poems by Robin Robertson

Venery
By  Robin Robertson  

What am I to think now,
the white scut
of her bottom
disappearing
down the half-flight
carpet stair
to the bathroom?
What am I to do
with this masted image?
I put all my doubt
to the mouth of her long body,
let her draw the night
out of me like a thorn.

Robin Robertson reads (go for the second one about the artichoke)