Dear One Absent This Long While 

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by Lisa Olstein

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It has been so wet stones glaze in moss;

everything blooms coldly.

 

I expect you. I thought one night it was you

at the base of the drive, you at the foot of the stairs,

 

you in a shiver of light, but each time

leaves in wind revealed themselves,

 

the retreating shadow of a fox, daybreak.

We expect you, cat and I, bluebirds and I, the stove.

 

In May we dreamed of wreaths burning on bonfires

over which young men and women leapt.

 

June efforts quietly.

I’ve planted vegetables along each garden wall

 

so even if spring continues to disappoint

we can say at least the lettuce loved the rain.

 

I have new gloves and a new hoe.

I practice eulogies. He was a hawk

 

with white feathered legs. She had the quiet ribs

of a salamander crossing the old pony post road.

 

Yours is the name the leaves chatter

at the edge of the unrabbited woods.

 

Lisa Olstein, “Dear One Absent This Long While” Source: Radio Crackling Radio Gone (Copper Canyon Press, 2006)

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