Tableau

Remember the one about the two intellectuals
walking the unwild woody trails
just out of sight of the houses? There among post-symbolic deer
unspooked by their conspicuous thrashing, they stumble
over rocks and branches, arms out, almost touching,
talking about, what else, poetry and their kids,
and wildly happy. The sky like a page
just turned to, your face just turned to me,
just that.
The way things broken off
a little too soon can last forever.

James Richarson
“Tableau” is from By the Numbers: Poems and Aphorisms (Copper Canyon Press, 2010).