When your body was left among shags of wild crab grass, I loosened my hair and reflected on your hands crossed over your grey wool suit, your tie balancing your heart, your day’s currents, your new silence.
I wondered for awhile, if I’d been viewing the scene through the window of a train. I saw ordered rows. Read the sky’s vertigo. Years shining up like eyes through verdigris plains. By morning the sun’s wide desire and the under-wing of a grosbeak greeted indigo streaks of soil. Noon ended the real mind. Still, I think of you as if you might return. Then I remember that view: autumn’s contractions expelling the last stubborn leaves from the oak, the field dizzy with dusk weather.
—Maureen Alsop