Alone in Love

By Stan Rice

I sit on the edge of the swimming pool. A leaf

In the skeletal stage floats by. Then the caw of a crow.

That could break a bone.

I am loved but feel alone.

I look for something above. An amputee

Has climbed the rose-of-montana vine. No.

The tulip tree has been brutally pruned.

Oh. When I was young

I thought the branch had spoken

When I broke it over my knee and saw in it my own insides

All wet and golden.

But now these fragments are like frozen Vivaldi

Thrown down on the floor and shattered. I slide into the pool,

So cold I shiver. A dead wasp floats by,

Its head on a piece of leaf, its shadow on the pool bottom

Rimmed in silver.

I'm so alone and yet I'm loved.

And all the atoms nod in agreement,

And praise me softly like applauding gloves.