The Prediction

That night the moon drifted over the pond, turning the water to milk, and under the boughs of the trees, the blue trees, a young woman walked, and for an instant the future came to her: rain falling on her husband's grave, rain falling on the lawns of her children, her own mouth filling with cold air, strangers moving into her house, a man in her room writing a poem, the moon drifting into it, a woman strolling under its trees, thinking of death, thinking of him thinking of her, and the wind rising and taking the moon and leaving the paper dark.