Fresh Start

A lifetime ago, it seems by now,
when I moved my life into these rooms.
So much have I lived in the last ten years
that recollection of other times and spaces
grows dim.
                         The tree,
whose branches spread
beyond the window, was
winter bare, the apartment
full of emptiness from which
the traces of another's life
had been completely purged,
few hints remaining beyond
the ghostly perfumes that
lingered near the turning
                      in the stair.

The air still sharp in the morning
with the frosts of early spring, winter's
curfew, every evening, still in place.
The night arrived  too soon. I found
only memory and forgetting to keep me company,
as, unaccustomed to solitude, I conversed
     with shades.

Now the long sunset shadows of summer
have become familiars. They nuzzle round me
while I think and dream contentedly.