A phone call and a good set of tires
brings you this far, to a dead-end road,
a clapboard house and birches greening,
early June. The air is thick with bugs
and sea-smell. In an upstairs room

someone you once knew in riding boots
and dancing shoes, who left
her sandal prints on washed wet sand
and once with barefoot toes touched
yours in the dark, making stars

lies barely moving under sheets
and a down-home comforter
beside the spot you're standing
as if you couldn't just walk away
in your sensible shoes.