Allyson Dowling
End of Summer
It was always summer between them
a temporary enchantment.
The sacred naming of plants, woodland groves
carrying the sun for each other as they dangled
hot feet in light-filled streams.
They were fearless really
as people are when the world is briefly theirs.
Riding horses in the fields, pockets of sugarlumps,
diving deep into dark green pools and vanishing
only to resurface rimed with silt.
Mostly, they lay on their stomachs
picking leaves from each other’s hair.
One sunstruck body entwined in another,
promises of always be together, imagining even
a house beside a great river, geese outside the door.
And they were too reckless to see the drooping and yellowing,
the deepening shadows
the cold smell at the edge of the trees.
Until, suddenly, one day
they were called back home.
Not understanding that it was forever this time.
Maybe one did come back, just to see,
but the emptiness felled her.
And she ran out of the woods
so that she could forget.