In winter, I like to walk out of the house in evening
when the bronze light’s cast rose and people seem
made all of a liquid and I can walk right through them.
There’s Wilda now, sweeping leaves from the sidewalk.
Five years ago she lost her husband Wayne,
who once on a picnic table unfolded a national park map
and traced, with mustard on his finger, the route
his Jeep took. She holds the broom as if it were a child,
close to her chest, and sweeps, sweeps. And there’s Luella
by the picture window, in a white sweater in front of her white house,
throwing salt on the porch. Months after Nathan died on a bed
in the living room, I helped her hang sheets on the line
one warm April day. We stood within lofting walls
in strict sunlight, and for a moment accidentally touched,
as if to get our bearings in the new, loose wind pushing up so much glare.
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