Sonata for a Tree in Winter
No one spoke about the water,
or the slight, metallic taste in our mouths when we drank it
and I only knew
years later, still searching—
What was the word for this?
What?
The lone tree in our back yard stood like my mother, frozen in the alcove
trying to remember what she was doing there.
This time of the year there really is no color in anything.
Grass, the color of ash,
the leaves are spidery riverbeds
or the undersides of her hands,
dried up like a broken mask.
Outside, the rustle of old newspapers
holds the lists of things, the names of people
who will not stay inside her head
and nothing can be said about the sun,
except from the 24th floor, it's as white as the neon lights
they move over her body in an exam room in December.
I wait with her, ask again about the doctor—
What was the piece of music you played for me before?
she asks.
Her hand holds an invisible violin.
She closes her eyes,
scrapes the bow across the air.
