What's Loved Will Hold

By Dannye Romine Powell

The hackberry tree
shading the old hotel
in the mountain town
I'd almost forgotten -
yet the image
eases in, settles,
as if a place
had been prepared,
a chair pulled out
in welcome,
the way your face
will appear
in my window
late afternoons
and I see again,
can almost feel,
what's already etched
there, vibrant,
one leaf cupping the sun.