I miss you steadily, painfully.

Day 25: "Light"
The view toward the back yard, earlier in the summer. That particular light, the very blue sky, the door open -
all that seems like summer to me now.

The grasses in the field have toppled,
and in places it seems that a large, now
absent, animal must have passed the night.
The hay will right itself if the day

turns dry. I miss you steadily, painfully.
None of your blustering entrances
or exits, doors swinging wildly
on their hinges, or your huge unconscious
sighs when you read something sad,
like Henry Adams’s letters from Japan,
where he traveled after Clover died.

Everything blooming bows down in the rain:
white irises, red peonies; and the poppies
with their black and secret centers
lie shattered on the lawn.

[Jane Kenyon {1947-1995}, ‘Heavy Summer Rain’, from Collected Poems]