Down the Lane
By Susan Browne
Down the lane winding between & behind houses, I find the cottage
I rented after I left Michael, he painted it bright yellow, decades later
it’s the same color, Mike with stars of paint in his curly black hair,
standing at the door, beer can in hand, saying, Done, saying, You sure
about this, sure as a twenty-two-year-old, he was my first lover
who I married because he asked & because of the look
in his eyes like no one could love me more, we kissed good-bye,
his smoky-sweet smell, he got into his truck, drove to Colorado, I went inside,
opened the windows, sat on the twin bed, only place to sit except a folding
chair at the scarred table where I ate mustard sandwiches, wrote in a spiral
notebook, read Of Time and the River, 900 pages, starting over again
when I finished, stood outside late at night, lizards darting across
the lane under streetlights, in the breeze the trees’ shadows watery,
mine mixed among them, the heart young & old at once.
