I’ve had to rebuild
to keep getting up each day,
to still see beauty.

With all tender life,
our days of soft communion —
now comes good sailing.

for Mack (and Thoreau)

It’s how I’m alive,
looking at the morning sky,
writing about you.

The sudden greening
this spring happens without you —
where you walked and ran.

Soft-eyed in the sun,
it’s not too much to say that
we had everything.

Early and awake,
we were out in the wet grass,
finches lit with song.

The distance growing,
you’re getting farther away —
birds singing at dawn.

Under the tall wild carrot
you found the understory’s
free, green galaxy.

There’s grief in those trees —
without you, my mind is there,
sinking into them.

The moon escapes us,
we lose it during the day,
fading into blue.

The ecstatic sun,
we sniffed, basked, lolled, ran, and walked —
we leaned towards it.

The endless beauty —
we found it every day,
paths led in and out.

Your nose off the path
in the cow vetch and grasses —
endless, proper work.

You’ve been gone four months,
I still see you out ahead
looking back at me.

Happily sleeping —
contentment with what had been,
your dreaming was sound.

The cold morning earth,
you went out to discover
all the night’s secrets.

Grief lives with me now,
alongside thinking of you,
I don’t forget it.

Spring shadows climbing
across fields and up trees —
your eyes like chestnuts.

Spring comes without you,
all of our ponds will crack, thaw,
I see you there, here.

The hope doesn’t go —
thinking of my life with you,
in these cold, hard days.