Ekphrasis

     Her lightly tanned skin, uncovered under the glowing rays of the sun peaking through the clouds, is hugged by the white swan's wing. The soft feathers envelope her hips as she reaches her hands across the bird's neck. Half of the swan appears in shadows, but its unfurled second wing and its curving neck glisten in the sunlight. The woman embraces the swan and her body angles towards the bird, but she does not try to hide her body in the wings. Rather, she angles her hips away from the bird while her arm crosses over her body to cling to the neck of the swan.
Her face lovingly glances towards the children by her feet, a smile playing at her lips. Both boys stare up at her with looks of wonder while gripping orange and white blooming flowers and each other. One boy reclines on the green grass and holds tightly to the other's arm as he stands just next to the woman's leg. Their pale, creamy skin is uncovered, just like the woman's, but they hide slightly underneath the shade of a grouping of rocks and bright red flowers. The boys' hair is trimmed short and both have curls clinging to their scalps. The woman has her hair tied back but it is in disarray, the front pieces floating about her face as they are pushed and pulled by imaginary gusts of wind from the water by the town far behind the luscious, green hill where they stand. Two birds have placed themselves on either side of the group, one on the rocks hiding the boys, the other at the feet of the swan. They seem to almost protect the group from the rest of the world - you can glimpse humans and beasts roaming lower on the hill, but neither the boys, the woman, nor the swan seem to acknowledge their presence. They are enshrouded in a kind of bubble, considering only each other and themselves, surrounded by stationary birds of white and gray.

(Leda and the Swan, originally by Leonardo Da Vinci, attributed to Giovanni Antonio Bazzi (II Sodoma) c. 1510-15, Galleria Borghese room XII)