Mulberry Tree
       

Someone playing flute, the music coming from
an open second-floor window,

sky overcast, and we're in front
of a mulberry tree,
its leaves wet. I need to memorize

the kind of tree it is, a way
of hanging on to this moment.

It'll be on a test, the one in which I'm likely

to forget what the tree's called and so
start to lose my connection to the memory, maybe
to memory altogether,

the first loose thread unraveling.
Flute music woven through the branches

and our conversation.
I wonder who even plays flute anymore
but I'm grateful. Love will be

on the test too, or is it the test itself? Love

when the answers
aren't easy. Love when it's not all new.

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Copyright © 2022 Brian Satrom All rights reserved
from Sugar House Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission