“all at once he was standing there / so sure of himself his head in the air / my heart was breaking”

For Poetry Monday:

Of the Shining Underlife, Carl Phillips

Above me, the branches toss toward and away from each other
the way privacy does with what ends up
showing, despite ourselves, of
who we are, inside.

                                          Then they’re branches again—hickory, I think.

                —It’s not too late, then.


First published in the July/August 2020 issue of Poetry.

---L.

Subject quote from Running Scared, Roy Orbison.