“At Dusk, Driving Past a Small Nursery on Upper-Mountain Road”

by Julie Cooper-Fratrik

Alone: two chairs in the evening; still, in the still evening. Alone on a hummock above a planting, a stand of yews. A poem of two chairs: green, in the green evening, straining on their iron frames, sinking into the ground, as though with a little weight. What do they wait for, still in the still green evening, above the yews spreading their branches this way and that, disturbing the days' geometry? Whom do they miss, the chairs? Whom do they call forward out of the empty house and into the garden? Into the cool evening?

A summer rain. For days. Empty chairs, almost facing each other. If they were occupied, the hands of the occupants might touch each other. Might. We can't be sure. Of anything. Their fingers might caress the still evening, the other's empty place. If only. There in the evening. Hands. They rested in her lap. Smooth, the tapered fingers. So fine. Their flutterings, small birds. Her sentences, the berries of the yews. Bright and hard. Or would be if she sat there. In the evening. Like that. If only. One's hand might brush against the other's. In the garden. The minutes just before dark when the green thickens.

In the evening.
Humid.
With desire.