Fast typing - "New Year's Day"

The rain this morning falls on the last of the snow and will wash it away.

I can smell the grass again, and the torn leaves being eased down into the mud.

The few loves I’ve been allowed to keep are still sleeping on the West Coast.

Here in Virginia I walk across the fields with only a few young cows for company.

Big-boned and shy, they are like girls I remember from junior high, who never spoke, who kept their heads lowered and their arms crossed against their new breasts.

Those girls are nearly forty now.

Like me, they must sometimes stand at a window late at night, looking out on a silent backyard, at one rusting lawn chair and the sheer walls of other people’s houses.

They must lie down some afternoons and cry hard for whoever used to make them happiest, and wonder how their lives have carried them this far without ever once explaining anything.

I don’t know why I’m walking out here with my coat darkening and my boots sinking in, coming up with a mild sucking sound I like to hear.

I don’t care where those girls are now.

Whatever they’ve made of it they can have.

Today I want to resolve nothing.

I only want to walk a little longer in the cold blessing of the rain, and lift my face to it.