Between Two Rivers

In Morristown, NJ.

They never tell you how dry it is here
in winter. The wind whips the naked trees
raw, and the branches are oracle bones
prophesying no signs of spring. What grows
grows only (one believes) in the mind, where
water falls as far and fast as one wills 
it to. Not in these hills, not this winter
anyway. The leaves pine hoarsely under-
foot in sepia tones for last summer:
God, how wild it was, how we tasted water
on our tongues, how it floated to our lips.
Then a skeletal crash: a dying tree falls
to its knees behind us, and the bloodless
scars before our eyes are gasping, still, for air.