Lace

up

when the wind is let in

when it is let in to lift

everything left

everything let lie, listen

the lift of lace

and crocheted wings, beaks

and bodies of birds

left placid against the glass

to take their courses back

to favored places they may

have been, being lace: hook

and fingers and thumb

the coveted cotton, pillow box

the gone bobbins, prickers

and lifters, all sundry

accouterments...listen: wind 

wants for nothing, needs

for nothing to be it but 

breathing.  Who hung them

up there in the attic, giving

them some affirmation inside

and maybe to the glancing

up eye, out?  Don't you

want to know, depending

on your romance, maybe how

they came to be made? 

Machine stages or staying

weights of bobbins

or do you want to know

who stood up in the window

to thread those cotton robins

(make them that) through

the rod and then walk back

-wards out of the room judging

their level sobriety? I wonder

if one of the things maybe

she was hankering for was

the simple walk up those stairs

one foot after the other

the scuff of her shoe on 

the tread and toe-kicked riser,

the sag and sigh of the cede

of each step, still relenting,

beneath her.  Just to see

those pieces.  Those lace

darlings come up in a breeze

if Andy'd left the lower sash

up just some, just some, stuck

probably in the pocket, but

the robins are free, like they're

just new, just relenting the nest

lifting before the last possible crash

after such a shocking, shocking 

fall, and how, if she could, she'd

press her face against them 

and let them touch her, and they

her, bird after bird.  She'd taste.

She'd awaken.  And tell no one.