FINAL PERFORMANCE
A spinner in the green years, I trudge the snowdeep woods
to find the Rima trees where I was warm in silk through
those first winters. Then the unwinding thread,
from which I swung by two spare arms and legs,
hung in the air like a gay trapeze, each vine
humming to the brace and pull and reel of child's
spider ways, an upside down dancer with her feet
in the clouds and the heart in her mouth a feast.
A beginner in the green years, my thick wool thumbs push back
the broken twig, the empty nest, the closed gray flaps
to summer's ringling tent. Embarrassed, I lift
a rose still red and moist and soft. Again I twist
its thin stem toward the light and dare the sky
to seize my heels and trick time's crafty eyes
till I repair the web and climb to one last height
before I leap —— —— —— to catch the hands of night.