The name of the horse of my friend's friend,
a farmer's son whose place we'd pass
when we rode out that way I remember,
not his name, just his mare's, Peggy,
a gleaming, well-built gray; surprising,
considering her one-stall plank shed.

I even recall where they lived,
Half-Acre Road - it sounds like Frost,
and looked it: unpaved, silos and barns.
I went back not long ago;
it's built up, with rows on both sides
of bloated tract mansions.

One lot was still empty,
so I stopped and went through and found
that behind the wall of garages and hydrants
the woods had stayed somehow intact,
and wild, wilder; the paths overgrown,
the derelict pond a sink of weeds.

We'd gallop by there, up a hill,
our horses' flanks foaming with sweat;
then we'd skirt Peggy's fields
and cross to more woods, then a meadow,
the scent of which once, mown hay,
was so sweet I taste it still.

But now, the false-mullioned windows, the developer's scrawny maples, the lawns -
I didn't even know what to do with it all;
it just ached, like forgetting someone
you love is dead, and wanting to call them,
and then you remember, and they're dead again.