I don’t know if leaving
is when buds nub the branches
or when pale colors drop
Your apples waiting,
unattended on a shelf
Grudging, tacit permission
for my mind to wander
from duties when I write
The last boy driving to that college, or
Your poring through a book’s gilt pages,
searching for those misremembered lines
This plate of scraps from a slice
of the cooling pie you set
on our fully outstretched table,
as if, indeed, company were coming.
Rodd Whelpley manages an electric efficiency program for 32 cities across Illinois and lives near Springfield. His poems have appeared in Tinderbox Poetry Journal, The Shore, 2River View, Star 82 Review, Kissing Dynamite, Barren, Shot Glass Journal, The Naugatuck River Review, The Chagrin River Review and other journals. Catch as Kitsch Can, his first chapbook, was published in 2018. Find him at www.RoddWhelpley.com.
