Mary Ruefle

This morning, I was struck by this poem from Mary Ruefle's The Adamant:

Max Gate

A few dried things, once
called leaves, tremble
in the swelling air.
I cough up my phlegm.
My wife reaches
for her hairpin,
and all of the years
caught up in that instant
come down in the storm.
The fixed root of an oak
uproots.
And I think, oddly,
of the kitten, half
black, half white,
we drowned this morning
in sterling weather.