Of A Sun She Can Remember

After they had been in the woods,
after the living tongue woke Helen's
hand, afterwards they went back
to the little house of exile, Annie and
Helen, who had lived in the silent
dark, like a bat without radar in
the back of a cave, and she picked up
the broken doll she had dismembered
that morning in her rage, and limb
by limb, her agile fingers moving 
with their fine intelligence over each
part, she re-membered the little figure
of the human, and, though she
was inside now, and it was still dark,
she remembered the missing sun
with a slow wash of warmth 
on her shoulders, on her back
as when you step shivering out of 
a dank shade into the sun's sudden
balm—and as the warmth spread,
it felt like the other side of water, 
and that is when she knew how
light on water looks, and she put
her outspread hands into the idea
of it, and she lifted the lines of light,
cross-hatched like a web, out of 
the water, and, dripping, stretched 
the golden net of meaning in the light.