Another Burning

I lit a fire for the first time since last winter
and it smelled like being in love with you.

I half expected—no, that word is a lie—
I imagined, in the old way, the way

I had of imagining you when you drove up
my driveway with your books on tape

blasting away calmly about Lincoln's assassination,
that you would come charging up my driveway

in the old way, last winter's way, your tears still lingering
for Abe, you'd somehow forgotten had been shot,

and let me comfort you for some long-gone thing.
It smelled like you would, and kept right on smelling
             that way.