Words for a Melancholy Season

This Dark Branch
by Ann Hudson

It's ten pm; my breath is foggy in the April air.
It takes three long city blocks to find a fallen branch.
I bring it in, and jam the end into the narrow throat
of a lemonade bottle I've rinsed and saved
on the kitchen sill since summer. It's nothing fancy,
but just enough to hang the miniature wooden ornaments on:
painted eggs, bunnies, ducks, butterflies, birds.
My mother cut down flamboyant boughs
of forsythia each year, but this dark branch will have to do.
Tomorrow over breakfast my daughter will laugh
to see it there, and exclaim, We're pretending
the branch is the whole tree! And that's the secret
to these cold spring days that feel like winter still.


You can find more of Ann's poetry at www.annhudson.net