Letter to Metune from Lahontan Reservoir

This morning, from a cliff’s crown, I sat above a lake
because I feared the face it might show me.
On the other shore, three wild burros drank deep.
I began a new story for my ghosts: I no longer want
to mean fear when I say love, that I’m trying
to open like this lonely highway, but no one warned
me about how, at fifty, a new love feels
like a particular kind of hopelessness, a terrifying
giving in like how I’m always afraid of heights
because I want to step off. Why do all the good
people talk to someone who isn’t there? I listened