By Fran Davis
You have put the black leaves
in the red teapot
but you are gone.
The place where you slept
is wide with your body
but there is no warmth.
You are in the garden
chopping the Mexican marigold
creosote smell cloaking the roses.
Or you are walking the blue hills
behind the house
hills older than all walking.
Outside the window the almond tree
is a white trembling
blossoms drifting from the parted buds.
You are gone and the day is wide
as the ocean
and as merciless.
There is no season for this waiting
heart flexed
the long breath of return.
Frances Davis has written a column for Coastal View News for 25 years. Her work has appeared in theL.A. Times, Passager, Calyx, The Chattahoochee Review, Askew, The Hopper from Green Writers Press, and several Gunpowder Press anthologies. She is a winner of the Lamar York prize for nonfiction and also a Pushcart Prize nominee. Also by this poet: "Green Heels"