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Sometimes I still check the weather where you are--
today, eighty-three and sunny as hell.
I bet you're by the pool with a cool drink;
I'm wrapped in a wool coat with a warm one.

It was one hundred degrees when you left.
Can't forget the last day, my foot on the
gas, down to the floor, and the turnoff to
the great, looming airport. Flat brass fish swam

across the tile. Now swim away, I said,
and you did just that. For days I swam through
ailing grass, through hardening cement, through
the silence you left like a taut string throughout

empty, humid rooms. On starched beds I waited.
Only in dozing did my body twitch
me awake, did my brain fear forgetting
the shapes of your ears, the length of your eye-

lashes. The day you rolled in was the hottest
day on record. After you left, summer
fizzled out like a match in a glass. Days
later, I wore scarves and sweaters, trembling.

So it goes: things begin and end; one day
the hot Sun will sputter with a choking
cough and pass on. Isn't it funny:
I barely knew you, and now I compare you

to the likes of that which lights the entire earth.