After your parents die, past and present mingle until everything is now.
Slow rivers flood and flow to the echoing sea,
vegetation leaps, fragrant with rot and birth,
and the earth is your last best friend,
your forever father and mother.

The sobbing, laughing, loam-blessed moments
rise in cobwebs of fog, ribbons of seaweed,
and sweet, tart leaves of grass.
Acorns and green walnuts fall like hail,
cradled in shawls of light.

Your old mother stands in her kitchen, spooning oatmeal,
your young father roars with laughter,
grandma shows you which mushrooms are safe to eat.
Your sons dangle their sturdy legs on the dock,
your daughter waves goodbye,
all the big-shouldered uncles dance in a circle,
and the careful, chuckling aunts knit and pray.

The autumn smoke lifts,
choirs sing from the raspberry patch,
cats walk on their secret paths,
no one comes home on time,
and there is so much fun to be swallowed like chocolates.

Nothing ever happens, something always does,
and at last you lose your flesh and only your bones remain
to be carved into a solitary flute —
and even that graceful song echoes forward and back,
here, and there, found and lost, lost and found again.