written By
Maybe it’s as easy as this:
knowing she will always be there
when you come home.
That she won’t have gone away,
even thought going away
was a place she could go to.
And that she’ll know
you will always come home,
and she will look up
from whatever she’s doing,
or come from some inner room,
to welcome you in
as if it’s the first time
you put the key in the door.
The porch light an oasis
she knows you will find,
and her as palm tree
swaying shade, cool water
deep in her hands, livestock
bedded down for the night,
the story of stars
soon to be within reach
all over her, all over the sky.
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Robert Harlow resides in upstate NY. He is the author of Places Near and Far (Louisiana Literature, 2018). His poems appear in Poetry Northwest, RHINO, Cottonwood, The Midwest Quarterly, and elsewhere. Or so he has been led to believe.
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