She calls to me across the pasture.
Over here, I answer.
Grasses shrink
from her big yellow teeth
as she approaches—
weeds don’t know
a mare’s gentleness.
And I still miss you.
Clouds pause.
Wildflowers hurtle
seeds into cracks
beneath the interstate,
open into
orange poppies
that catch fire
in the sunset.
And I still miss you.
Ancient forests are burning.
Smoke dissipates, like exhaust
from an old bus on an old highway.
You can live without the man
you loved once & maybe still do,
but who is a woman minus her horse,
without a dog, cat, bird, ferns, something?
Teaching is my life now, you wrote.
The rain will return,
it always does. The wind
will have business elsewhere—
trees to terrorize,
crows’ feathers to blow across the river.
I still miss you.
