After a long time in the darkness, the fur cloak 
on her shoulders seemed like her own fur, 
covering her skin with a fine, soft coat.
When her eyes adjusted to that place,
she realized it was not the solid black
she thought she’d fallen into, but an uneven 
darkness of different shades and depths.
In her wanderings near the surface,
sometimes the light of day entered like an arrow, 
and she could see outlines, edges of boulders, 
streams, veins of quartz gleaming, crystals
in the granite shining out. At first,
she kept a lit torch with her always,
despite the long journey to the lake
of fire; now she knows her way
along the paths, as if she were surrounded by 
another, larger body, but she has less and less desire 
to roam, looking for a ladder to the world.

Instead, she lies curled in her mud-rimmed robes
in the small, smooth cave of dirt, half dozing, almost 
content. In the silence she hears water dripping,
the slow breathing of the animals in their beds of mud a
nd straw. She wants only to sleep, to sink
into the dark, a mother who will hold and comfort her. 
When she tries to remember her other life, circled
by blue, brightness falling like a shower
of flame, the images are small and dim,
like sunlight through the cracks of high
rock ceilings. And when she summons up
her other mother, waiting in the bronze
glow of autumn, her eyes are without pupils,
like a ruined statue; her once-strong legs are crumbling 
beneath her; she is fading slowly,
like the memory of light.