The Prediction by Mark Strand

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.