“I think that perfect equilibrium was achieved
during the long era of dwelling in trees.”
— Italo Calvino

Someone else will turn this page you left
on the 6:30 train. Someone else will find it
in the seat pocket, stuffed in with a trampled
paper cup and a torn-up receipt that would
have told you it was a London fog: this page
you parted with unfinished, the same way
the roots on the mountainside parted with
their tree and the tree on the sawing board
parted with each branch to make this volume
some stranger will hold of you. As the car
trundles out of the station, someone else
will finish your chapter, first in the flicker
of the platform lamps, then in complete
shadow. Someone else will press a thumb
into the firm center, open the spine like
an orange, tilt a head to trace your pencil
smudgings in the margin. Someone else
will pass over the dollops and curds of ink,
pass the way a bird will over a field, the way
an undercarriage will over a railbed, hovering,
fast moving, a body merely touching at the edge,
will push on through the long hours of night,
push on to the ending that still awaits your
interrupted arrival. Someone else will read
the final news and weep, the long out-breath
rebounding in the empty carriage like the old
owl hooting in the yard, the whistle cutting
through this small town and waking no one.