Six miles and no traffic,
just you and your bliss
filling your lungs
with the perfume of clover,
saying hello to the yearlings
that come to the fence as you pass,
to the groundhog that lives
near the bend by the barn,
making escape, a squeezebox of fur,
to a doe and her fawn barely dry
doubling back into the trees,
to the mink in tall grass by the spring
where the house used to be,
its dooryard still blooming,
a fresh hatch of grasshoppers
launching themselves off warm macadam,
and on top of the hill the headstones
stand smoothing against the broad sky
bearing the names that remain on the farms
not slowly enough disappearing.
