Looking-on

This place has hard edges, is a jagged land.
Her soft frame sidles, 
hands turn gently round unaccustomed 
to the corners of stone
the wood's symmetry.

Her face is worn, smooth
sanded by a wind
that has long blown 
but is now a slow
pull of a door,
an unsteady standing,
a shuffled circumference. 

She has spread too far 
for her thin limbs to bear 
this extra weight -
old place of unfamiliar slate
grey skies, knuckled ground
exposed by water-pale eyes
the totter of a hand
and a rubbed face that looks gently round.

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