The Unseen

I did not know her well
but watched you give up
the hard currency of your life

to countermand the comets
of her errant limbs, the sad
smiles that would sprout

out of the slender hour
under your partial hold.
As if the world were good

enough, or good in passing,
not overwrought with grief
or the self-pitying we find

in the dictates of forgiveness,
you cut clean to the bone
without a knife or symbol

or doctrine. When her fingers
curled into night-triggered buds
and she could not walk

their straight line, you held
tight to the body you loved,
like she were the raft against

your drowning. Even so, as
others gathered to talk
of her strength in surviving,

it was clear you'd survived
another flood, and now had
only a long swim to this shore.

— George Moore