Intruders

She takes a lover. Another. What
       did you expect, a woman still young,

spring in her body and not yet winter.
       The lovers say there is something

elusive, something missing. There are many
       forms of winter. Of spring,

too, but they tend to leave less
       impression, everything opening,

becoming more than itself, unlike
       winter with its pressing down and down and in.

She reads The New York Times
       every morning, sliding it from its blue

shoot before she comes back inside,
       taking in the front page, the day’s measure

of grief, catastrophe, the random seldom
       joy. Kevlar has kept more and more alive

but at what cost: legs, arms, brains.
       The unprotected extremities. Nothing

she has suffered comes even close. She chides
       herself: Get a grip: slaps her face

in the mirror. And so it goes, year in,
       year out, the lovers like leaves, falling,

a few pressed inside books, the same
       age they would always be forgotten.

Lynne Knight | The Music of the Spheres in the Form of Wildflowers
Mudlark Contents | Mudlark Chap No. 66 (2018)