New poem

[Chris Tong]

BRANCHES

For a moment
they reminded me of my mother's hands,
hung wide in despair
at some misdeed that I cannot recall;
in that moment
looking at the empty hands in the air
I had been moved to wonder
if it would end.

Or would she remain,
a single root for two
branches, bare,
flung in frozen disarray
appealing to the winter skies
as if to say
"What now, should the least leaf fall?"