This morning I heard a loudish thunk coming from the kitchen. I thought an animal might have gotten in somehow. But it was only a large dead branch that had fallen under the weight of the water from last night's rain. I saw the image of the still barren trees reflected darkly in the marble countertop. On top of everything else, my brother had just texted me a poem by Eavan Boland, from which: "A dead tree. The future. What does not bear fruit. Or thinking of."
In the winter, it is sometimes hard to tell the living and the dead trees apart, but then the first spring rains come to prune the dead branches.
