If you could touch this poem
you might feel the hiss and spit of the sprinklers
in the yard outside or the tremulous way I am sobbing
as I type it
If you could smell this poem
it would be the scent of frangipani shampoo as I smooched
the top of her head before she tripped
away from the terrible beautiful things her life
had branded upon her and I had let them all happen
Past the Eremurus Cleopatra stand, past the cracks
in the pavement, past the whole bloom and tick
of summer and the brittle twigs from when we sliced
back the hydrangeas, that last time we ever
worked together on the yard, or, for that matter, on anything
Elizabeth Cohen is a professor of English at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh and the author of eight books, including The Family on Beartown Road, a memoir and (most recently) The Patron Saint of Cauliflower, poetry.