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In the Mountains

by Sally Ball

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I stretch out under the skylights, flushed.
This borrowed study's much too warm
but overhead: four cool breaths--
pure blue, rectangular . . . a little dizzying
as if my lungs were failures
when they're full: so much sky
not taken in--

I'm listening to the valley trees.
The wind is cruel to them;
all they do is reach--
such struggle in the branches,
lurching after something they still feel.
Like people who aren't quite in love,
who long to be. Stone pine, maple, sycamore--
not exactly flailing,
nothing to do with hope,
just green limbs doing what they do,
all day: Every day--more urgent,
more subdued sometimes.

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