Out the dining room window
he sees the overturned tricycle,
an abandoned Frisbee
littering brown grass
In the season between
summer and winter,
leaves gone,
chain link fences show
Though she sets the table
as she always has,
the aura of the barefoot woman
in strapless white dress,
breast tops pale as tulips,
yet haunts the backyard
of the afternoon of perfect light
where she stood amazed
at what she had planted:
the blooms of lilacs, azaleas, pom poms,
the two week flowering of spirea,
perennials, annuals, begonias, what-nots
She’s fries pork chops in blue jeans now,
her autumn sweatshirt two sizes too big,
the same but not the same
In the i-n-g season, the sights
of flower beds, spreader bushes,
are now lost in her private song
and to the longing of late cicadas
reaching back, reaching back