Phyllis tells me about the women
                    who made her a doll.
The soft unformed body, a talisman,
                   passed from house to house;
each friend adding what is needed.
These women have become like Isis, I think—
    The way she searched for Osiris,
         walking
                    miles
to gather back the scattered limbs of
what was lost.

          I see Phyllis’s friends,
the ones who made her this doll,
                           in their own homes at night:
Kids, dogs, TVs —
                      finally
                                silent.

How mindfully these women work.
   Each stitch mends
                   the rent in the body.
How when their hands lift
         the needle —
                 pull the cotton thread
         in
             and
                  out,
It is like a breath:
          Such careful shape;
                             this love.
Such precision.

When Issa watched his son,
          saw scarlet fever scorch
                     his smooth cheeks;
It reminded him of the great fires,
the way they would always rise
from the south;
lick across the roof tops of Kyoto —
to ride the south wind.

Watching this,
     Issa knew
          that his son had become like
the small red papers waving
at the temple doors:
Scraps of
          prayers —
                   tinder,
                             left by the faithful.
How quickly they burn.

When Issa held his child
                             for the last time,
saw the boy’s eyes darken;
color leaking into the hard ground.
           He took his grief like a great breath,
                     and blew it into
                               a vessel of form.

Issa used words to paint
                            the face of his son.
Two short years—
          a sweetness so swift
                   it entered and left.

A brief memory—
                 first dew.