Upon Watching Charles Dance in Jewel in the Crown

It is for Charles Dance's mouth
that I lust:
his thin grim lips, wary smile,
and those eyes,
clearwater blue,
that bulge slightly
from their sockets.
I imagine them probing my face,
seeing into
the Masterpiece Theatre depths of me.
I watch as Charles unclothes.
He is wooing the shy nurse
adrift in India's revolt,
but he woos me as well
with his broad hairless chest,
Celtic white and freckled.
And as he loves her against the pulse
of Sitar and monsoon,
their English reserve
hair-line fracturing,
he places that Charles Dance mouth
upon hers
and I
ache.

[Published in Into the Teeth of the Wind, Vol.1/Issue 3, 2000]