After Alison Watt, ‘Venus’ (2015)

Their backs against the grass,
she felt a pull, as if the leaves

on the trees were lodestones,
the hairs on her skin rising at once.

They reached for each other’s fingers,
succumbing to the lift

that took them above crowns of oak,
all the way to the cumulus.

How lost they got, inside the billow,
reaching through white –

their arms slippery with moisture.
Then out, soaring

towards bright celestial objects,
their skins coupling, lucent,

as she looked at him to say
I told you it would be like this.

By Rebecca Goss