She believed the story
of the 24-hour day,
the certain tilt of the world
as it bowed around the sun
and kept its spinning gentle
without moods or decisions.
She believed that each day
required a shape,
a salutation of the dawn,
a careful honouring of tides,
a shared understanding of the vesper time.
She watched the devotional pattern
like a missed train,
or three cars back
from the front of the journey.
The body, yes,
its filtering of sun and food
and penchant for dancing,
learned to follow daylight.
It listens to rustling in the dark,
and sometimes flies at night.
And she has started to absorb
its whispered secret,
the unseen freedom
in the orbit that it follows,
obedient to the pull.
The light she thought she needed
lives in a different synchronicity
than the sun of her own real heart.
The orbit of her days
spins to follow a rhythm
she is just beginning to taste in her blood.
Each gift of 24 hours
is potter’s clay
for the spinning of her own diurnal web
which lasts a little longer
…so that the waking
and the sleeping,
the rising and setting down,
are not confined to a visible gravity.
The movements of her flow,
her true orbit,
do not fit neatly in the perceived day.
She needs more time,
and has it.