A sudden fall in the empty house
would be like drowning—
no one near to see her going under.
            What else could happen?

One way or another, she will leave
her privacy behind: her journals
and a ribbon-tied pack of letters in the drawer,
            and on the shelves, books full
           
of underlined passages and marginalia,
but now the curtain opens on
an April morning, and she’s been spared again.
            Impossible to plan ahead.

She could call out, but she won’t hear the voice
that answers in the mountains, the desert, 
            or in a burning bush.
She could continue what she started yesterday,

or leave her work as Michelangelo left
his slave sculptures in the rough
            to show them struggling
to free the self from the body.