Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!rutgers!topaz!ctong
From: ctong@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU (Chris Tong)
Newsgroups: net.poems
Subject: New poem
Message-ID: <6801@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU>
Date: Wed, 5-Nov-86 20:43:59 EST
Article-I.D.: topaz.6801
Posted: Wed Nov  5 20:43:59 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 6-Nov-86 23:49:32 EST
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Lines: 19


			BRANCHES


	For a moment
	they reminded me of my mother's hands,
	hung wide in despair
	at some misdeed that I cannot recall;
	in that moment
	looking at the empty hands in the air
	I had been moved to wonder
	  if it would end.

	Or would she remain,
	a single root for two
	branches, bare,
	  flung in frozen disarray
	appealing to the winter skies
	as if to say
	  "What now, should the least leaf fall?"