Marilyn Krysl

1942–

She Speaks a Various Language

The floor is cold

the ground frozen

This is the bottom

All the world’s seeds have wound down

And just when the stem of my spine

seems to have dried up

and become a stalk

on which my head merely nods

just when I think nothing is left alive

the bare branches of the trees

rise up, beckoning

And it isn’t simply

that I want to go out to them

They also want me to come

Come, they say in their motion

in their scraping of branch against branch

like a woman rubbing her hands together

Come with us      where we are going

Walk with us      up into the wind