Against Naturism

I realise it’s not all salad sandwiches

at pinewood picnics, endless volleyball.

I’ve heard the argument that talk of shame

and how our forebears thought their bodies dirty;

how we've all got one. Seen one, seen ’em all.

But it’s not for me, beneath my double load

of Calvinist and voyeuristic tendencies.

For me, I have to see the clothes come off:

the way a button’s thumbed through cotton cloth -

a winning move in some exotic game

with no set rules but countless permutations -

or how a summer dress falls to the floor

with momentary mass and with a plash

that stirs us briefly as we ply our passion;

a hand pushed through the coldness of a zip,

three fingertips that follow down the spine

to where a clasp is neatly spun undone

amidkiss, by prime legerdemain

and who cares that it happens once in four

and never, never on the first undressing,

it must be better than a foreskin snagged

on gorse thorns or a cold, fat nipple jammed

in the scissor drawer, the bounty and the blessing,

the mystery of nakedness reduced

till on a par with go-go palaces

where goosebumped, grinding strippers strut their stuff

in the birthday clothes of backstreet empresses,

down on a par with the oncologist

who gropes for lumps, the night-morgue man who clips

his nails amongst the naked, bin-bagged stiffs.

So, stranger, what I want to say is this:

if you’re to join me in a little sinning

(and this is my place up here on the right),

please understand I’d value some reluctance,

a cold-feet shiver, as in the beginning

when Eve discovered modesty and slipped

in and out of something comfortable.

For there are many ways to skin a cat,

but ours is human nature - things come off

so rarely. Come in. Let me take your coat.

Copyright Credit: Roddy Lumsden, “Against Naturism” from Mischief Night: New and Selected Poems, 2004. Reprinted with the permission of Bloodaxe Books Ltd., www.bloodaxebooks.com.

Source: Mischief Night (Bloodaxe Books, 2004)