The heat of the day was finally softening, the kind of late afternoon light that turns everything to honey and gold. We were walking, the dust of the path fine and pale on our sandals, leaving the formal gardens behind for the wilder slopes where the vineyards began. She was ahead of me by a few paces, her hair loose and catching the last of the sun. A breeze came up from the valley, carrying the scent of cypress and ripe fruit, and it lifted the hem of her simple linen dress.
I stopped, just to watch her move. There’s a particular grace to a woman who is unaware she is being observed, a poetry in the ordinary motion of her body. The sway of her hips was like the gentle, measured rhythm of a palm tree in a slow wind. I found myself thinking not in courtly phrases, but in the raw, honest language of the land itself.
“How beautiful are your feet in sandals, O noble daughter!” The words left me quietly, more a thought spoken aloud than a formal address. She paused, turning her head slightly, a smile playing at the corner of her mouth. She didn’t stop walking. “The curves of your thighs are like jewels, the work of a master craftsman.”
It was an artist’s observation, not a lover’s flattery. I saw the strength in them, the lines carved by a life not spent entirely in palaces, but in hills and courtyards. She had poured water from heavy jars, knelt in herb gardens, climbed these very paths. Her body told that story.
“Your navel is a rounded bowl,” I continued, the distance between us feeling both intimate and vast. “Let it never lack mixed wine.” It was a wish for her never to know emptiness, only abundance. The imagery came unbidden, from the depth of a heart that saw her very form as a vessel of life and celebration. “Your waist is a mound of wheat, encircled by lilies.”
She had reached a small, flat terrace where the vine-dressers sometimes rested. She turned to face me then, the setting sun haloing her form. The light caught the fabric of her dress, hinting at the shape beneath. “Your two breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle.” The comparison was delicate, alive with a gentle wildness. They were not monuments, but living, breathing creatures.
“Your neck is like a tower of ivory,” I said, my voice growing firmer as I closed the distance between us. “Your eyes are the pools in Heshbon, by the gate of Bath-rabbim.” Those eyes, dark and deep, that saw through pretense. “Your nose is like the tower of Lebanon, that looks toward Damascus.” A regal strength, a profile that spoke of dignity.
“The crown of your head is like Carmel,” I was near her now, close enough to see the faint dusting of pollen on her shoulder, caught from brushing against the flowering broom. “And the flowing locks of your head are like purple; a king is held captive in the tresses.”
That was the truth of it. I, the king who built temples and judged nations, was a willing prisoner. The grandeur of her hair, dark and rich with hints of wine-dark purple in this light, was a sovereign territory where my will held no sway.
She laughed then, a sound like water over stones. “How fair and pleasant you are, O loved one, with all your delights!” She reached out, her fingers lightly touching my arm. “This your stature is like a palm tree, and your breasts to its clusters.”
She was turning my own metaphors back on me, a game we often played. “I said I will climb the palm tree; I will take hold of its fruit.” Her voice was low, a conspiratorial whisper that held the warmth of the fading day. “Oh, may your breasts be like clusters of the vine, and the scent of your breath like apples, and your mouth like the best wine…”
She trailed off, her gaze holding mine. The air between us seemed to thicken with the perfume of a thousand blossoms rising from the valley as the cool of evening began to stir them.
“It goes down smoothly for my beloved, gliding over lips and teeth.” I finished the thought for her. It wasn’t about intoxication, but about sustenance, a wine that nourishes rather than steals sense.
The first stars were pricking through the deep blue of the eastern sky. I took her hand. “I am my beloved’s, and his desire is for me.” She said it as a simple declaration, the final word in our silent dialogue of glances and poetry.
“Come, my beloved,” I said, no longer singing, just speaking. “Let us go out into the fields and lodge in the villages; let us go out early to the vineyards and see whether the vines have budded, whether the grape blossoms have opened and the pomegranates are in bloom. There I will give you my love.”
It was an invitation to a shared life, not just a night. To the ordinary and the growing things, to the slow ripening under the sun and the patient waiting for fruit. The mandrakes in the terraces below were beginning to give their scent, pungent and earthy, and all around us at our doorstep were all choice fruits, new and old.
She squeezed my hand. “I have stored them up for you, my beloved.” She meant the fruits, the seasons, the days, the love. All of it, kept and waiting. And we turned together, leaving the path, walking into the shadow of the vineyard rows as the world turned to silver and dusk.
