At times she is bright and quite brittle,
a frost flower.
Then she wears the little girl effervescence
she once was
as a perfume, to let people know when
she is coming, and to remind them of her
when she has gone.

At these times a dog, a cat and a duck,
pale phantoms made real by her imagining,
follow her as she walks along the lane.

Among friends her fizz stills; she relaxes
by the fire.
Her halo of girl-perfume is discarded,
bathed away
by a rippling of affectionate radiance and
curtains of sweet velvet that cocoon her
from winter and night.

Then her hands dance and conjure from air
old boyfriends and summers, old schoolfriends
long banished by domestic oblivion.

When the lights are dimmed in the night
and wind howls
in the chimney, then her frost thaws.
Then her snow
melts to reveal fragrant earth beneath,
soil of all love and all pain, and tender young
shoots peeping through.

And her body sings of anguish and abandon,
and her heart tells of dreams seldom spoken,
and her blood exults in triumphs to be dared.