She wasn’t there when I arrived,
the woman with rich gray hair
stretching to the small of her back,
I had been driving long
up winding roads across a plain’s
mourning emptiness
and down into the narrow valley
where she lived her dream
beside a stream
that happily ran into a translucent lake.
Her door was ajar
but no one had seen her leave,
murky clouds gathered,
the day darkened
and rain fell in large sorrowful drops.
On the lake
a blue rowing boat drifted aimlessly on soft water.