GHOST LAUNDRY

By the end of summer, they brush up against us,
almost flapping with scent,
these absences that are constant and faithless
in the same breath.
                        Like heathens,
we can't believe our abandoners
and want more than the solar drag of wind
on the clothesline.

After a heavy rain, apples wash by in the ditch,
turtles rise for the road,
                               a meeting ground
for the high and low.
I watch clouds darken fields of sunflowers,
that golden crop that follows beginning
to its end.

Why our need to stop things in mid-air,
as though the waterfall could refuse more?
One night you said you could see her smile again,
the smile she wore,
                        a worn smile like the beaten path
that stays on well after the garden.

First published in Harvard Review