Fifteen years ago I drove south to see you as trees broke
into bloom—redbuds, pears, dogwoods—and my heart 
unfolded like a bud closed too long in the cold. 

Later, I moved into the log cabin built when you were 
still married to a woman with chestnut hair that spilled 
around her shoulders while she knelt in the dirt as if in 

prayer, planting dozens of bulbs on the edge of woods. 
Sometimes I wished we didn’t live where her daffodils
burst yellow and green—worthy of Wordsworth’s ode—

along a ditch beside the gravel road, reminders of the life 
you’d shared with her. I wished I’d never seen the wooden 
box with recipes written in her hand on faded index cards—

Tomato and Basil Rigatoni, Amish Bread, Blueberry Cobbler—
and the wedding photographs stashed face-down in the drawer 
of a bedside chest. I wished you’d never told me about the rugs 

she wove on a loom in our bedroom. I wished she hadn’t left 
that green, down-filled vest from L.L. Bean in the hall closet. 
It’s not my style, I said when you offered it to me. It looks 

like a life jacket. Slipping it on, I hoped it wouldn’t fit. 
I was tired of living in a house with your ex-wife’s ghost. 
So sick of it! As I zipped it up, you said, It’s perfect.