Rebecca Alexander in Washington Park Arboretum, Seattle 

Tzimtzum

take the body

banjaxed by its multiplying failures

and the mind

encumbered by unexpected subtractions

so the path ahead narrows and steepens

towards a destination

neither sought nor known

a world-entire begins its slow retreat

keys that opened the house for decades

refuse to turn

no matter how they're coaxed and coddled

and she is standing like a stranger

on the wrong side of the door

but lucky to have found 

this street which went missing

on the morning errand 

circling the neighbourhood

its landmarks foreign and bewildering

inscrutable signs on the map

her memory a chalkboard being chased

by a fiend with an eraser

she who could shingle a roof or hotwire a car

Gematrist of Trollope and James

interpreter of tomes, of symbols and ciphers

is light as a husk adrift on a random current

while an obliterating smoke

scrolls through the mind's swarm of thoughts 

evicting meaning 

is the hour too late 

to take the body and the mind

build them a garden

densely planted with love and friendship

seeded thickly with stories

set free every question you meant to ask

unlock every answer

keep nothing back

before there is only nothing