Stroke as Question

from Field Stones
by Robert Kinsley

How to come to terms with terms
untermable, like the life in a flower
that opens and closes, opens
as the door to her room entered
just now by a husband she may
or may not recall.

The women in her hospital bed
grows smaller by the day
the weight shedding itself
like a learnable easy language.

The world is now not nameable
no matter how hard she tries, voice-
less she tries
to utter to make understood
the heard voice saying to itself again,

see how the gray smoke rises from the tall and distant chimney,
see how the pretty small children stand bundled in the yard.

The day closes down
in a strange mutability of light
the blue arm of the horizon pointing
in so many directions but not one of them is here.