Nearness and Entrance

Days and nights of the most and largest changes
in her tenth year. Absolute time had always been near,
but in that year it entered her seemingly
by letting go either end. Why would a child think
of what she was before?
During the days, place stayed constant, house
of her whole life where she knew every thing
in every drawer and cupboard. Why wonder
what anything becomes?
The days made room according to the light.
She would be on a cot in the breezeway, her body
on the body of the cot, in the body of the breezeway,
being and not waiting.
It was a green meshwork as much as the woods were,
or the cottonwood letting go its fairy princesses.
Some thing would be in her hand, the white but scratched
skin of the birch she'd peeled, or ruffles off the overblown
peony. She knew fragrance as a kind of voice.
Nights were bodiless. Crickets turned from form and were
their sounds. Think of her turning off the bathroom light
to hurry the feeling on, happy to make the tub unknowable
through whiteness, happy that loud water can become its farther
part, removed from clarity and sparkling.
She is of a size that can float there. But
when she opens her body and slides forward, time enters
in a vibrancy and changes her, and leaves her this
pleasure now, later desire.