This is the blog form of the original composition. You may also read it as a list on one page.
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her soft words to slip through stone?
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Or must she travel
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a steep sinue of a road,
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twisting up, around
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blind curves: she cannot know what’s
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coming but strives forward still.
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Forty years ago,
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when almost a woman,
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a serious girl
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found his features beautiful,
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felt the heat of his pursuit.
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Now she can still see
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how he walked down her front steps,
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how he crossed her street:
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tall, slim; hands loose at his sides;
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steps, fluid as a dancer’s.
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Now she remembers
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the summer she turned twenty.
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He charmed them: boys, girls —
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student guides at the world’s fair
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let him lead them anywhere.
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When he came for her,
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when it was her turn at last,
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she feared, yet followed.
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Midnight flamenco, tangos,
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wine, whispers: all real or not?
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Now so long ago.
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Still, his essence at that time,
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what he was to her,
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flourishes unblemished, fans
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the embers of memory.
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Santa on Main Street:
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His cavalcade, commercial.
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Good will, good business, joined.
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Equal measures of dollars
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and dreaming of sugarplums.
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She speaks of herself
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for one hour; portrays how
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fairy godmothers,
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luck rule her life; this woman
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blind to how she makes her own.
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He lived tough at first.
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His house near the bus depot,
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not nearly a home.
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he watched through tattered curtains
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as wheels turned toward Somewhere.
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His intersection:
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without lights, five roads converge.
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Stops at each corner.
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His lifescape: a pub, petstore;
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a gas station and buses.
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Wanted: dead or alive,
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a new dancemaster for death.
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Well schooled? Yes, of course,
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in the arts. To pirouette
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to life’s choreography.
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Her sharp reflection
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in a mirror framed with vines.
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She stares at her face,
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the mask that hides what she knows:
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under lips, that smile — her skull.
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What is she, she asks.
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Bones, flesh, gray matter, veins, blood?
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A prison of cells?
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Her body confines, defines
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her essence; when she lives, dies.
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She, shackled and bound,
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rejects her physical self;
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seeks freedom elsewhere.
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Spirit, soul: free in her mind
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where cell walls wait to be breached.
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Exit the balsam.
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Chains of gold, ornaments: boxed.
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Without scent or lights,
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the room emptied of Christmas
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becomes itself, unadorned.
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The nature of cold:
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as a colour, blue as ice.
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Replace that cliche.
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As a colour, colourless:
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diamonds in winter’s crown.
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A life line of crowns:
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palm, crosshatched in diamonds,
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triangulation.
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Jewels of experience
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nestle in fate’s filigree.
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A lifetime: long? Short?
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Life is nothing without death.
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Like those much-married,
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they become one another:
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similar in looks, habits.
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Their resemblance lasts,
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survives the dying moment.
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Without injury,
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only the absence of breath
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severs their intimate bond.
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In the aftermath,
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absence of life becomes large,
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fills the chamber.
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Life force, animation, soul —