Even the spires of milkweed
bend over in the low tumble
of wind through the prairie,
dry reeds tapping hollow
on ancient gravestones.

When I left you here,
the ground was frozen and wet,
with pelting sleet leaving
a pebbled sheet on the grass,
the canopy, the cars.

How different it feels
in August now, sun high, grass
grown in as if it had never
been cut into, and reeds
making that lonely ostenato.

How absent you are
of the chaos of life, sticky
love that weighs you down
at every leaving,
fills you with doubt,

how you are not unbound.
You are no longer tethered
and yet somehow
not untethered either,
me lingering as I do.