Notes after a walk: a tree that had caught its own fallen limb

She hadn’t lost a child but if she had she imagined it would be like that.
To hear footsteps running up behind you, and to turn around and no
one there. To see a crow gliding under the trees, a crane fly skittering on
the gravel driveway. Apple trees with fallen-off branches, why oh why.
The pattern of white under the tree, she had not recognized at first. Fall-
en petals.

Morgan Harlow’s work appears or is forthcoming in Elm Leaves Journal, Folio Literary Journal, Ink Sweat & Tears, Louisiana Literature, North Dakota Quarterly, Sierra Nevada Review, Poetry Salzburg Review and other journals. She teaches writing in Madison, Wisconsin and is the author of the poetry collection Midwest Ritual Burning.