A Girl

A Girl

leaning against a shade tree
in a white summer dress—
like an idea—born

in the mind of an elderly gentleman who sees
—the girl's fingers tracing
a pale thought at her temple—
the word for memory is written
in a long hand

in other words
he will run toward and away from

this girl, this tree, this season—breathing out
like the whisper of children
who in the fall of youth know
how dark shadows reach over a lawn,
turn an elderly gentleman to ink—
summer dressed in a hard sentence.