lines

I heard that you left her today

and I remembered that she always called you Blue.

I never did.

I remembered your mother standing in our yard

-          June,

June,

                June,

my mother would say, shaking her head

as if the world were falling apart

over apples and picket fences.

I heard you left her today

and I remembered our first day of school.

you called my name

-          over and

over

                and over.

you were in one line

and I was in another.

I never answered.

it seemed the thing to do.

all love is stolen

do you remember my grandmother’s wood?

-the hanging snake vines that formed swings for two,

the pale, upturned roots near the shore,

that made strange, magical palaces?

we called it her wood – though in truth it never was.

we raced through the neighbor’s field to get there

-how furious he would have been to know

that we had crushed a single tender plant.

you held aside the barbed wire,

and I crawled through,

my hair caught, and you pulled it so roughly free

that I cried.

all love is stolen

-you taught me that.

it moves through our heart like a fever

and then it is gone,

no more our own than the amber moon

passing through a cloud.

like children we are freed only for the planting and the harvest.

in the winter we will be called back

to stand in line.