Rembrants Lover Poem by rebecca palmer

He spoke of how Rembrandts lover
Is depicted drawing back a curtain,
Her palm upwards
The drape caught aside by the back of her hand.
This small gesture that divided the world of the day from the night.
This rather plain dense set woman,
Face gleaming pink in the candle light
Lying warm in the bed they share
Is looking at her lover moving across the room
And it that small movement we see
How she loves him,
Traces of how she looked the first time
ten years before
and how she will look again a decade on.
This we talked off in the park
Under a cold blue sky,
how what we first saw will change over
time.
We won’t always be the most beautiful
Person, we will grow older but if we get this right
The passionate love we feel now will always be
There as our first look and yes my love
that first look, one day will suddenly so swiftly
be the last
And time will have gone from us.
Where will we be
How will we have spent those years?
Rembrants lover of two decades,
ten years younger died six before him
and survives him in many images.
She is the bather lifting skirts to show
Flesh blatantly desirable in his first gaze
And in yours I will be the girl dancing
In the dark, hair in my eyes
Taste of salt and heat on my neck
Belly hard and flat under the palm of your hand
No one will ever know save you how
You will see me for the last time
Nor how I see you, but I can never
See an end to me lifting up the sheets to welcome you into our bed.