House of Trees (Golden Shovel)
*After a line in Victoria Chang’s poem, “America,” in Obit
Your last words before you slid into the
otherworld followed me reading “where the dead
become part of the living” in my poem I want to believe you are
some orange jewelweed growing on a felled limb or an
oak dropping acorns to continue the line any image
insisting on life you said you’d be every bird of
the stars the dirt the rivers in the wind
the mountains you said even in the dust and
then I would know you are part of this world when
you are no longer in it I can only write half a poem until they
come the signs I mean let’s comb
the files for rainbows insist that the bees returned to their
hives in our courtyard because you are in my hair
you said you’d be everywhere I don’t cry anymore and our
time together seems a gasp but I feel you in the trees
more than anywhere else I hear the whispers and the rustle.
