Perhaps

This poem was first published in The Madrid Review.

Perhaps

Last time I walked this path, where jackdaws skip  
and tchack companionably, and search for seeds, 
this stubble field was chestnut trees; that pasture, 
hops in hanging garlands, dense and green. 

I was with you. We stopped to explore the barn, 
now gone, that smelled of nettles, absence, damp –
asbestos fragments littering the floor – 
then found the floods had blocked the way we’d planned.

We climbed a fence and shuffled awkwardly 
across the flooded fields, watching the swollen 
river rush the debris on its way.

Did we see jackdaws on that stolen day? 
We never made it to those distant hills. 
Perhaps the river stopped us, after all.