Begin with a first, tentative line
searching for something: the sense
of a limb, the feel of flesh
beneath the paper.

 It is late on a summer’s evening
 in an upstairs room, a single lamp
 softens the shadows. Here is silence
 and the slow, sound of quiet breath. Sometimes
 a few words stumble out, somehow
 deepening the silence, until you drift
 off into the sight of starlings
wheeling in a great cloud over the river.

Begin again: another outline
and another. There is the urge to move,
to get up and stretch; resist it. Instead
begin to fill in the areas between,
gradually bringing her into being. The lines
are tangled now; nothing is clear, there are
so many layers; through them a face, hands, a shoulder
come into view and then disappear. Gradually
in the confusion of lines, you begin to see her.

Anne Humphreys