She’s nameless in this story as it goes and goes,
History has not left its mark on her body
As clearly as fires mark the rings of trees
Her scent was of dying honey and lemon rind
And she had dark lines across her feet, deep scars
So that the others wondered where did she go
Her fingers eagerly bent light aside, a touch
That slip that falls, falls, pursues the deep sun
A clustering dance of still, looking for form not available
She had the voice of a convalescent, no a voice
Of one who had lived alone in a cave for a long time
Without speaking to a soul; anticipatory beauty
O instantaneous river, o brass wellspring, she slowed to a walk
Working through her own penance in the dust.
She looked through her own shadow in the telling,
Compelled to kneel on the stone, the thrill of the ask, the space,
Balance between decorum and pain, then see her running
A sacred wraith, her face a pale lantern in the dusk
Imagine a beehive, as it hangs from a branch like a sling,
What is to understand she let fly, and she thought of where
The mind opened out, each wingtip unfolding and through…