Snow Bear...Berkeley 1971 C/C?

It hit me right away that she was a
female Boo Radley slithering ghost like
along Kathryn's kitchen wall at midnight.

I'd heard about her,but never saw her
until that night in the communal house
when I went for tea and toast.

White robed and alabaster skinned,
her blue veins blinked when I turned
the lights on .

She stared from deep, purple edged sockets.
Her skull face taut from hunger,
hands enfolded to a fist upon her breast.

Anorexia was slowly erasing her.
A phobic fear of elimination caused her
to shun all but mouse portions of food.

Quickly I lowered my eyes,mumbled a soft hello
and asked if she would like some chamomile tea,
being told that was all anyone ever saw her swallow.

She nodded, sat at the farthest end of the marred wooden table,
I prepared the tea and pushed a mug half way across;
wraith like fingers reached out and slid it closer.

Slowly I buttered two toasts,cutting off crusts,
dotting with honey and dividing each
into four tiny squares.

She watched me like a white owl would
as I chewed,savored,swallowed.
I ate four,washed my mug and left the room.

I heard her chair scrape,then the tinking
of fingernails on the plate as she reached for what was left.
Then the faucet ran,and I saw the light go out from beneath my door.

Kathryn found her huddled and shivering beneath
an overhang of a Photo Mat booth
in a rare Berkeley rain.

All she possessed was in a cloth satchel
slung over one shoulder and a raggedy
violin case glued to her left hand.

She played for loose change over
in the Haight,and I wondered what she bought
with her meager money.

She was mute by choice,although sometimes
late at night we could hear her crying and Kathryn's
soft voice urging her to have a little soup.

Once we heard her screaming in the bathroom,
her intestines trying to be loosed,her phobia
fighting back -
afraid to see
afraid to smell
afraid to be unclean.
Plainly,she was dying.

Finally,a flush,
an hour shower,
and she padded back to her room.

Her premature gray hair was dry as straw
and fell like silver pine needles to the moonlit
deck where she brushed her thinning hair.

Soon a plaintive song wafted in from the back yard.
It may have been Brahms,but who was I to know?
Sadly soft and lilting,it was so skillfully played on that fretless instrument.

Kathryn found her family,left a message
where they might find her,as she had disappeared,
I forever wondered if it was, in fact,too late.

Oh,Snow Bear,
what a fierce name you bequeathed
your frail,fragile self.

Your night song will linger forever in my mind's ear.