The Bowens are at home, but they don’t hear me.
Across the yard their massive barn waits, empty.

A square of shadow: the great open door.
I step inside. The swing’s still hanging there;

and in the drizzly, drowsy afternoon
this cloudy August Sunday I sit down,

ush off, am launched out toward the soaking green,
then back, then forward: lawn to barn to lawn.

Five decades’ distillation, like a dream:
nights in the loft; Paul walking on that beam;

the mounds of ripe manure and moldy hay,
the swing how many children till today

swung and still swing on. . . . Two bright windows frame
Ralph and Sue, who both look much the same

as when half a century ago I saw
them first. He’s rocking, reading, back to me,

lamplight glancing off his snowy hair;
she’s talking on the phone in a blue chair,

both fixed on other times and places, drawn
separately away ...

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