You Asked About Longing

“There you are,” the sun seems to say,threading, briefly, a three-day cloud.

Wind through a field, across your face —“I was getting used to the absence” — and hair,

just-red, tucked from your shoulder to behindyour ear, leaving less hidden a face that, when

you woke this morning, turned at once intoand through the pale light, narrow

between curtains. Sometimes we want a thing— leaves toss like water; eyes, wet in wind, toy

with closing, but resist — more than we can admitwe want a thing. Remind me to show you where,

two springs ago, the chestnut mare gnawedthrough the top rung of her paddock fence,

the space she left herself to leap through — notfor the freedom of it, or anything like escape,

though her leaping was for sure a liberty. No,we found her standing there sometime later,

touching noses with the foal she left behind.