I Am in Love with the Woman in the Serious Light Advert

Alone in my darkness,

benighted with the London Review of Books

or any given Sunday newspaper magazine,

I have lived with her maven image for some years now:

always she sits, bathed in Serious Light,

inhabiting her fit-glow early sixties

with calm assurance and designer glasses,

intellectually inclined, sensuously powerful,

in bed confidently selfish, playfully stern:

for eternity she scans the FT’s How To Spend It –

white halter-topped, bare-armed and poised,

sofa-posed, Windle & Moodie hair styled

for theatre, gallery, restaurant and gym-sweat,

she has:

on her wall a shadowful Chrystel Lebas forestscape

and outside her immaculate picture window

gawping for clues, basking in her disregard,

reading her naked warm cold-shoulder.

“A Serious Light will make words leap off the page again with breathtaking clarity.”

Could I ask for anything more perfect?

When did my words last leap off the page

(with breathtaking clarity)?

Quietly cool Coltrane plays on the Bose sound system

just a fraction out of shot, by the Folio bookcase –

I make her a cup of rich, strong, Italian black coffee,

we exchange observations on the music reviews,

decide which exhibition to see today,

agree which one of us will make that cottage booking,

check whose turn it is to see to the hot-tub

on the roof garden. Make eye contact about last night.

And this morning.

Back in my Serious Darkness I tear myself away

from her attainability, and scan the advertisement:

“Special offer - £150 off with this promotional code”.

No point in looking at the website to see the price then.

Seriously, enlighten me:

where did I go wrong?

Ted Eames, 2019