After wandering
like a speechless
cloud

over meadowland,
you’re reminded
of her,

the numerous
days of recent rain,
and gray

time,
then the wordless
seconds—

which kept
as if arrowed,
or crossed-out

thoughts
you’d left
beside

thoughts
in the blue-
lined white

of a notebook—
while you step,
now,

around piles
of wet,
dumped grass

before entering
sideways
into a skyless

opening
of forest.
You’d chase

her,
you know,
boy

chases girl past,
even,
the deadwood

of this footbridge
you pause
at before crossing,

with its rotted
boards held up
in part

by the mangled
roots
of a tree

shoot
someone else
has wedged in,

and the stormwater,
you see,
has collected—

just as words
do their meanings—
underneath.