A Coruscant Energy

Loren acted in six films; in the year my pioneering life began, 1962/3, she acted in another six. One of these latter films(1962) was Boccaccio where she stared with Anita Eckberg. She won the first Oscar for a foreign language film in 1961. Some regard Loren as the most celebrated actress of the last fifty years(1953-2003). This month Loren turned 70. Both she and I are getting old. -Ron Price with thanks to "The Official Sophia Loren Website," September, 2004.--1 With appreciation to Roger White for this title from "Death of the Greengrocer," Whitewash, Haifa, 1982, p.22.

This icon of the cinema
during my pioneering life,
this woman of grace, elegance,
beauty and charm, unpretentious,
as sexy, as seductive, as they get,
she came out of the woodwork
and blazed across the screen
and blew me away, yet again,
one of thousands of beauties
that played in the background
of my life, all my life really,
right from my first memories
when I was only three or four,
before breasts bud, before groins
fill out, jostle and strain toward
their imperative destinations.

And they still blaze and dance,
still jostle and strain keeping
the concupiscible appetite on heat,
always wanting more than I can get
or should get or would get or could get.
What’s the big idea anyway?
Is it some kind of cosmic joke:
sticking this incredible pulchritude
in front of my nose and saying:
you are only supposed to look.
Don’t touch; it’s only for show!
It’s to reproduce the species;
that’s why there’s such awesome
force here. I’ll give you a taste,
but don’t ask for more than your lot,
your share of this coruscant energy
that pops and glitters, spurts and tangles
to achieve life’s unthwarted, fecund purpose.