This woman is alone at the window, considering
the towering sky. Her furrowed skin is loose
around her, translucent with age, revealing
the delicate, blue veins of her hands, her neck.
She stares into the space behind the glass.
She dreams of dying, that dazzling moment when
she will exhale, finally, the last sour breath.
Then it will begin. The coffin will envelop her,
a pungent smell of brine will rise from her skin.
The soil will overwhelm the hinges of the box.
It will creep in, so as not to startle, lingering
deftly, reverently touching the yellowing bones.
The earth will not waste even this frail frame.
It will labor over her.
This rapture will come over slow years--decades,
centuries. When the abandoned graves are overrun
with snarled weeds and wild dogs, it will breed
worming roots, writhing with life, from her body.
In this riot, in this seething of the earth,
uneven stems will thicken and wind into
the dried, old corridors of her absent veins.
An oak will spring from the remains of her throat
and thrust up to the clean, clear air. She will stretch
toward the luminous stars burning blue-white cold
in the winter sky. She will say to them,
like one who has been in love a long time,
You see, I am new again.
I am new, and I have found you again.
