Weeping willows in poetry

This week’s prompt over at Big Tent Poetry was two-fold. Throughout the week, we were encouraged to leave lines from our own poetry, and then to choose a line from someone else as a starting point for a new poem. I chose the lie “and the willow weeps without knowing why” from Vivinfrance. I didn’t use the phrase exactly as given, but it inspired this little image and I went from there.

Nobody knows where she goes
each day, when she collects
her mail from the box at the end
of the lane and instead of walking
back up the path to her door
to read the bills and advertisements,
perhaps a letter from a friend,
she steps along the tree line
that edges her property and slips
in between the slender white trunks
of beech towards the hill that overlooks
the whole town. At the top
of the hill a grove of weeping willows.

I followed her up there once,
to that grove, a cluster really,
four, maybe five, willows bent over
with hunched shoulders watching
the town with one eye while tears
slipped from the other. I was only
a few metres behind her, but my lungs
puffed at the hill, and she crested
the top before me, out of sight.
By the time I rounded the crest
moments later, she was not there,
not in the grove, not on the hill,
not anywhere my vision could
fathom, and I sat down to rest
and to ponder her existence
while the willows wept
without knowing why.