some mornings I
wake and find
sleep has rendered
me a spare
bare-branched
woman naked and
leafless every line
of me defined by
wind and rain and
the gray light of
a dying season

I am revealed

the sturdy
tracery of my bones
gleaming white beneath
skin and muscle and
tendon and blood
deepening into
aging’s potent
unadorned
beauty

I am home

a bare-bones woman
wrapped in
nothing
but the shimmering
power of
herself

I rise