What has returned, at last: rain,
longer light, your carrot hair
now curly and crimped as parsley,
the smell of wet earth opened.
You feel warmth next to bone, salt
edges to gestures and words,
the tang of color and mass in this world
redeemed from whiteness.

You were splendid all those months,
birch-bark skin and a skull austere
and innocent as an acorn. Poison
chiseled your cheeks, sculpted sockets
to the core. You silvered every room
with highlights of receptive silence
as if you were scanning a fugitive phrase.

As porcelain remembers fire
and a violin's body the saw and the plane,
you recall that private refrain, each swell
and slide, even as ferns uncurl
in the woods and the garden's dark hole
lightens and fills
with slender uplifted arms.