Little Apple

I.
A woman who looks in the mirror

sees behind her
shapes
much like herself:

blue heron in tree pose,
heliotrope Chinese Houses
in the garden.

II.
A woman who bathes
in water like glass,
feels it shatter inside her.

In her mouth,
cross as a gull’s beak,
sea stars shorn from salt marsh.


III.
A woman who breaks a branch
of a manzanita,
desires its color,
the red so like a
garnet fastened to the sun.


IV.
A woman who watches everything
knows of regeneration:
the grace of the manzanita,
the grace of the sea star,
each her quiet enterprise.

-Barbara Sorensen