As her eyes wax full she opens her door
And drinks in a morning rare for the season
Letting the sunlight pour onto the floor
So strangely exotic for no particular reason.
Producing a ladder she rests it slowly
Against the side of her red-brick womb
Climbing with care as if it were holy
And welcomed atop by a jay’s dashing plume.
Sitting in lotus she marvels a while
And breathes in a breeze whose name she’d forgot
A serene little star among rooftop tile
As the world spun about at a quotidian trot.
Like leaves turn to sun, her arms by some force
Are gracefully lifted up to the blue
And the song of the tree limbs begins to course
Into her bones, soaked through and through.
As her hands come together, thumbs and forefingers
She hums to herself and sways east to west,
Grazing on the scent of the dew that still lingers
And carried by a gust is kissing her breast.
She appears to be pulling down with her hands
Something not even a hawk’s eye could see
Some endless and thin and delicate strands
Beginning to bunch in her lap, on her feet.
The sky comes undone, and the trees as well
The wind and the birdsong, the flowers, the town,
Until all in her view is but an empty shell
A perfectly colourless, infinite gown.
Moment by moment the day pile grows
And she starts to weave it into a nest
Until her rooftop is weather’s repose
Which she carries inside with a smiling zest.
On her round wooden table waits a most common jar
In which she presses the nest for an hour
Handled with magic, so as not to mar
One silken strand she has wrought with her power.
She tightens the lid and shelves the weather,
Steps out of her door and lets out her laughter
The echo brings chill, and rain light as a feather,
And a listless sun that follows thereafter.
In the pantry she looks at her jar once again
And places a label on the flat outer side
“Open When Suff’ring” she writes with a pen,
And sets down to her work in her dismal day stride.
prince nothing 