feverish and heavy

For he
who I want to understand
that
time
happens
whether you fill it with
work and stuff
and things and dread
or not.

How you disappear
in time, how you
disappear;

Who notices air?

Who could stand
a life all foreground?

Some days, yes, you fill
all the windows; some days you are
feverish and heavy, your bones
glow through the skin,
in winter even your shadow's
an ember on the floor;

But mostly this spring
you disappear
gradually into the sparse fringe
of willows on the other side
of the smoky pond,

into the dogwood; the melting snow
smudges your footprints

into
the not quite green

you disappear

Who notices air
except when it is gone.

[Margaret Atwood, '12' from 'Daybooks II', in Two-Headed Poems]