hung like a clothespin

Smiling field of wilder flower
Hemmed in by stoic trunk and swaying bough
The cottage was built where it stood
By hand and foot
A stone's throw from the edge of the wood

Once lived in
Where love lived
Fresh swept floors of well packed loam
What once was lived in
Once was home

I lay on the roof
Straw hat over my eyes
Sun strumming the tune of the day
Against bare feet
and bare toes

Where was she?
She hadn't agreed to meet me here
Grandfather's handiwork beneath my sun browned back
But I'd hoped she'd be-
                                    -maybe it would have helped to ask

Something about the way the wind whispered
as it wandered through the wilder flower
Strange words promising otherworldly riches
Like the kind of love that once lived below
And a face with name to love and know

As the trees know the wind
As the leaves know the ground
As the stillness knows the sound

of a lazy afternoon in the middle of May
of sweetea in a sweaty glass
of a child's laughter
of a hunger
of someone to long for
and love
and run passionately after

the sound of unbroken promise

Heart beating with unknown haste
I sit up and look to the untrimmed summer grasses below
A footstep
Bare toes on the grass
It was there-
I-
That sound-
No-

No.

No, it was nothing

It was just the wind
chasing itself across the field
and into the woods

remembering
the lonely boy atop his grandfather's cottage
the field of wilder flower
the once loved in pile of haunted trunks and boughs

lonely clothespins hiding in the overgrown yard
longing for return of the kind of contentment

that only one loved knows