She Loves So Deeply

She loves so deeply
it leaves her heart empty.
This is her great weakness.

She listens to peddlers and politicians,
and solicitors of religions,
who come to the big house.
She listens carefully, not to what they say,
but to who they are.

When she was very young,
her mother, who was frail and ill and dying,
left her, with a note, at the door of a prosperous couple
who live at the edge of town.
She became the ward of a gardener,
and the gardener’s partner.

When she was fifteen they gave her
a one-room cabin, east of the big house.
They wrapped it with a large ribbon.
It has a mullion window overlooking a small meadow.

When crocuses come in spring,
she goes to her hands and knees in the snow,
places her face to the bloom 
to see if there’s a fragrance.
This is her strength.
Deer graze at her door.

She doesn’t wear a hat, she has adapted
to every kind of weather.
She feels its changes.

She has been old all her life.
Her hands are slender, strong and clean.
When she sings, they rise up beside her, like herons.
When she walks, she sings.

For the sake of others,
she makes herself predictable.
She walks into town, at the same time,
by the same route,
so that people can avoid her, should they wish to.

The loud and obnoxious call her friend.
As do the silent and slow, the bent and the meek.
And many strays.
Her eyes hold a playful light only children see.

When she vanished, people said,
“That’s what comes of fools.”
To put an end to speculation, the council,
although they didn’t know her name,
issued a written statement pronouncing her unsound.

It’s been forty years now.
On the date, families and strays gather at the town gates.
They bring food to share and spend the day watching.
It’s this that keeps the town from dying.