Out one noon on the old viaduct,
Speculating, skulking in the fog-shorn hills,
I see an elder woman, naked, hear her beneath my steps.
With every tree stands her freckled leg,
In each dale her spackling, ready feet,
Over her sunken shoulders hangs the whole sky.

She waits as firmly as the filled train track,
And roves to the ocean in a thousand new instances,
Brush and canopy and sluicing stream her endless confine. 

I warm my hands in my new coat pockets.
Solemnly, staring.
And a second image comes.

An aunt, a great aunt, and hers, and not only those.
And friends who smoked and littered the days
With hope and frivolity.
A mother and father, maybe mine, smallest of all,
Rolled up in the big brown fold and cold waters that
Stretch, stretch, stretch,
But gathered here, toothsome, like an easy lunch.