In my walk
from the car onto this empty campus
of many denouements already past,
a squirrel seen scratches up the bark
into branches, and startled,
a dove flutters almost unseen over mown grass
to classroom windows
shut overnight; here now, even your ghost
seems distant as I reach the steps
I took that morning and in the first months
after we lost you.

These are the sights—
as twenty years ago, as today, the still
unbetrayed trees trimmed to
advertise their image on
the old kept campus; civil signs guiding
strangers to ivy and buildings
they do not yet know, promote what the young
will need as they weigh
the grounds for themselves, decide
whether to make them new next year.

In this silence and absence again today,
nothing appears in what I look for;
an exhaustion summer will not heal
this time around, will continue to tunnel under
all my efforts, though this morning sun
may be adequate soon
for the wearing of shorts, for arms, legs,
stomachs till today kept covered,

and already,
the fog in the parking lot is burned away, sky
that will send everyone looking
for summer.