How no shoe fit them,and how she used to prop them,having dressed for bed,letting the fire in the coal-stove blueand blink out, falling asleep in her chair.How she bathed them and dried them, night after night,and rubbed their soreness like an intimacy.How she let the fire pull her soft body through them.She was the girl who grew just standing,the one the picture cut at the knees.She was the girl who seemed to be dancingout on the lawn, after supper, alone.I have watched her climb the militant stairsand down again, watched the ground go out from under her.I have seen her on the edge of chances—she fell, when she fell like a girl.Someone who loved her said she walked on water.Where there is no path nor wake. As a childI would rise in the half-dark of the house,from a bad dream or a noisy window,something, almost, like snow in the air,and wander until I could find those feet, proppedand warm as a bricklayer’s hands,every step of the way shining out of them.