Progress

Old, gay, she sat with me beside the burning log;

The comfortable dog lay at our feet;

We drank our tea. . ..

The room was filled with her;

Erect, alert,

One who had faced all challenges unhurt,

Who now was warmly, thoroughly fulfilled

With life as life had willed.

No droop betrayed the mouth

Nor slacked the muscles of the sensitive hand

That taut or tender at the hours' demand

Had moulded circumstance.

The eyes' quick glance, like a free bird

Direct from bough to bough,

Flew from the past, as we agreed that now

The angles of the world were strangely twisted:

"But it grows better," she insisted ;

I raised a skeptic's brow.

"Ages ago," she said, "I won a prize

For geometric drawing."

The dim eyes shone:

"I noticed then: however fine the point of compass pen

Or firm the hand to close a circular line-

The end, seen through a magnifying glass,

Invariably would overpass the start, a fraction:

The spiral's mounting action had begun."

She smiled: "A neat, authentic sign,

That unescapable upward twist

That flows, in spite of man,

Through the blind channel of the human wrist."