A Directed Life

“In daylight everything is clear and tangible; but the night lasts as long as the day, and we live in the night-time also.”
—Carl Jung, from Modern Man in Search of a Soul

Through Midtown, she haunts a daily path,
impelled to Safeway. Hair now grayed,
her body bent, she returns merely
with rolls of bargain toilet paper.

Today, she passes through the Christmas shoppers,
all of us chimeras buying from chic boutiques.
But this dead-eyed ghost of basics,
she does not turn or speak—