Arrival

There was that graying fence rail, dried and splintered and stretching on.

The long grass, nodding its head, dead and searching.

The shadows thrust and flung themselves into their meeting spaces,

to whisper and collude. 

You were there too. In greener times.

When we measured the shadows with the spans of our hands.

And there was the hem of your dress, lovely and worn.

Shaded beneath it, your knees together, calves pressed and pressing.

You were shrugged shoulders and too-red cheeks.

You sat upon that fence rail, gently to avoid the splinters,

gently because you only know gently.

Then you were gone.

A cactus wren, briefly alighting,

anchored to a foreign sky.