The fallen branches of the forest are my limbs,
not the limbs of trees. The person who enters the forest
also enters me, just as I am leaving.
You see this in the latticework of a moth in June rain.
Or in the feel of old rags beneath the sink.
A stranger recognizes herself, the familiar fabric.

Music

What the world will save—

Bright-blue marbles, thinking they are sky.
Morning, knowing it is lonely.
White sun on pavement: so loud

it is like being sung to sleep.

Margaret Hanshaw is a graduate of the Vermont College MFA program and author of the chapbook Yellow Ripe (Dancing Girl Press, 2013). Her work has appeared in Poetry Miscellany and is forthcoming in VOLT.