She wakes away a stage
               —the receding cheers— 
herself some indeterminate age
               and, it seemed, known

for something she hasn’t done
               in forty years.
Distracted, she oversteeps the tea
               (as she is prone),         

sits in the sunlit living room,
               mines a psalm;
noticing the English ivy’s
               dry and overgrown,

salvages two lucky cuttings.
               Library, bank, the gas station,
a long conversation
               with bright, unbowed Joan

at the women’s shelter,
               the unspoken word “battered”
seeming to pelt her
               like a stone.

Home. A nap.
               Tidying up,
she spends an hour in an hour
               she spent at home

the evening her mother passed;
               considers “passed,”
the warm capillarial light
               in which she shone

like (she thought it) a maple leaf
               held up to sun
a long unlonelied moment
               before the day is done.

The day is done.
               She is poured out like water
but still, in bed, talks her daughter 
               down on the telephone,

then lies with half-shut eyes
               stitching and unstitching
all the presences
               threaded through alone,

yielding to the slow dance
               of grace and circumstance,
a pirouette of silhouette
               and solid bone.

This poem was published in Commonweal’s hundredth-anniversary issue, November 2024.