and being happy alone afterwards

This poem is from today's The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor. I thought it was beautiful in a quiet, small way--it isn't full of big words or complex structure, but it is pure and true and beautiful:

Summer in a Small Town

by Linda Gregg

When the men leave me,
they leave me in a beautiful place.
It is always late summer.
When I think of them now,
I think of the place.
And being happy alone afterwards.
This time it's Clinton, New York.
I swim in the public pool
at six when the other people
have gone home.
The sky is gray, the air is hot.
I walk back across the mown lawn
loving the smell and the houses
so completely it leaves my heart empty.

"Summer in a Small Town" by Linda Gregg, from All of It Singing: New and Selected Poems. © Graywolf Press, 2008.