copeland morris NIMBLE THREAD

You wonder if they are jonquils, if she favors
Daffodils, if you or someone else remembered
Not to say, "get well soon", as the nurse arrived.
You recollect that no other distance comes first.
And she was the first to give that fear a name:
A fear of what is, the person you fear to become.

You cannot imagine her in that hospital room,
Her hair turned gray, a nimble thread pulled out,
A kind of quicksilver held between your fingers.
No less enduring than now, her matchless eyes:
Transparent, small, revealed by cautious eyelids
She draws like blinds to shelter herself somehow.

The moonlight settles on her mother's house
With outlines of opal that trace the fluttering trees.
The crossroad flashes and flags the slowing train.
The thrill and the vertigo could not go quietly.
Between exultant lips, she fathoms the risk
For both of you, as she awaits your kiss.