Sonnet

A man talking to his ex-wife on the phone. He has loved her voice and listens with attention to every modulation of its tone. Knowing it intimately. Not knowing what he wants from the sound of it, from the tendered civility. He studies, out the window, the seed shapes of the broken pods of ornamental trees. The kind that grow in everyone's garden, that no one but horticulturists can name. Four arched chambers of pale green, tiny vegetal proscenium arches, a pair of black tapering seeds bedded in each chamber. A wish geometry, miniature, Indian or Persian, lovers or gods in their apartments. Outside, white, patient animals, and tangled vines, and rain.