Lives On

They are never far—
the gaggle of previous functional flesh 
that in private end a public presence 
she, once called mother,
falls out of her name
and leaves 
the way a door invites an out—
framed, open, immovable, 
never itself the leaving

But no perching on marble thrones for her
no hideouts beyond the clouds,
she has left into the skin 
of everything that breathes,
not just raising me
but releasing herself into me

They told us at the burial
she had gone ahead
but I felt her double back,
sensed her
in the middle of an ordinary Tuesday,
in the steam rising from a pot of rice,
in the rain that strikes the earth like a drum
answering with the speaking of my name
I find her often
in the particular blue
of late October sky
hearing her wind-whisper 
“look, baby, look at that”
as if beauty 
were doing something
just for us.

She is in the bending
she is in returns
branches buckling under winter-ice,
lifting again 
in the poise of spring

She is not metaphor
not memory
more the neighbors
who never knock
instantly inside
rearranging
your luck, your bones,
the direction of the wind


Call them what I will —
spirit, ancestor, force, breath 
none wait
for me to die to meet them

She has joined ancestors 
making time elastic
not just with memory
as she is still in the making of me,
but one more witness to attention
one more pair of hands in practice 
willing to hold what’s heavy
with legacy
from when her body dropped
not yet stopped from speaking,
because in me 
she is still arriving