Love Poem With Toast

When the men leave me,

they leave me in a beautiful place.

It is always late summer.

When I think of them now,

I think of the place.

And being happy alone afterwards.

This time it’s Clinton, New York.

I swim in the public pool

at six when the other people

have gone home.

The sky is grey, the air hot.

I walk back across the mown lawn

loving the smell and the houses

so completely it leaves my heart empty.