Again the death-plot
has miscarried:
she’s kept her head,
she isn’t married—
not by her lights—
and on her cot
(which isn’t his bed)
through hot, hushed nights,
she conjures, hour
by hour, from vapor,
a mind’s-eye tower
of unbound paper:
one thousand stories
or just one, climbing
slow as the moon
of shifting glories,
looming immune
to quakes and fires—
a stock-still, sky-tall
shrine to timing,
which she’ll let fall
when she desires…