I had just hung up from talking to you

I had just hung up from talking to youand we had been so immersed in the difficultyyou were facing, and forgive me,I was thinking that as long as we kept talking,you in your car in the parking lot of the boys’ schoolas the afternoon deepened into early evening,and me in the study, all the books aroundthat had been sources of beauty to us,as long as we stayed in the conversationpadded with history like the floor of the pine forest,as long as I thought out loud, made a jokeat my own expense, you would be harbored in that exchange,but the boys were leaving the trackand after we hung up I looked out the windowto see the top of the bare January trees spotlit to silvery red,massive but made from the thinnesttwigs at the ends of the branches at the ends of the limbsthey were waving and shining in a lightlike no other and left only to them.By Jessica Greenbaum in Poetry via ? Photo: La Garconne