Stardust,  
the hardest thing to hold on to,
forms our guardian  angels,
the ones that sway us
to our favorite tree,
settling each branch
in a sugary light.

We scamper
towards it,  all the dust
of sun and star reflecting
golden in our faces,
adorned in the
red and white regal robes
of our younger self.

God particles
surround us,
their soft collisions
cooling on our skin,
filling us with dreams
of things we may
never know again.

For now,
we fly on our
given golden wings
into our angel’s sway,
for they called us little birds
and we believe their very word.

We soared
with them in their heaven,
pausing only briefly
on a branch of sky
to sit and cuddle together,
whispering how they
value us in our ears,
their gift to us held tight.

From
the farm shed
our parents call us
and we settle on
the vernal, yellow
nimbus of earth for
one last celestial dance—

waiting
and knowing the empty pair
of red and white dance shoes
they gifted us, that are sitting
on the floor like a callus,  
will someday be given a
reason to move once more.

Soon, all I know will die,
                be buried or burnt
                in the bonfire,
        lost to senses and thought,
                      become un-
                          known.

            I will fall to my knees
            and become a turtle
                carrying my home
                    on my back.

                    If I cry out,
              who will hear me?  
            Who will
                          know
                            me,
                    when everything
                          known
                          is gone?

After, the awe returns with less shock.
A father lives in a quiet unannounced moment.
At his celebration of life
service all the children wear black leather.
They refuse to die, be strangers,
vow to know their names, remember their world.
The sound of traffic on the way back home leads them
to a smelly bar open this cold night.
The sirens fade pass for the party inside.
The balcony holds and holds.
Whatever war there is
it will not arrive this night.
They will likely never forget
all this dancing through vintage songs,
dancing again and again.
—And there it is. There it is—
Everything they’ve given up
to stay here and find more.

They pass the plate between them

mother to daughter, father to son,
a communion stretching to forever

until the plates are full
and father and son retire to
the living room to watch the game.

The mother advises on the adornment’s
of the daughter, the father pats the son
for his stratagems of the future.

They have always been this way and the
singing cold coming from the window

only makes them closer to one another,
that thing they do to get through
this meal and the next and life.

How many solitary meals they had
together they can’t remember.

They know not what they have
given up, if they gave up anything,

only that the meal was solid and filling.

Sixty degrees and clear.
She dies -morning hospice shift
while I’m getting ready
to visit her.
Waxen in her white bed,
arms bruised and quiet now,
mouth wide in a gasp
as if in scream, as if saying
ah, no!  Both eyes closed,
turned down for my visit,
denied all further light,
sky or even ceiling.
I touch her hand. It is
cold.  It’s only been
two hours. At the threshold
I see the elevator.
I’m not ready
to drop down that tunnel.
I go back and kiss her forehead.  
Outside, the clear light types her life.

I treat the future as past,
a bright yellow house I inhabited,
filled with broken furniture
needing repair, replacement, to be
quickly put to the match or just all thrown out.
There is a kitchen with pots and pans
everywhere and much flour dusting everything—
and bread, bread, bread, so so so much bread.  
Maybe I will keep that aqua sofa with
the broken frame and pop-out spring
or that oil portrait of my dead father
with the eye gouge that makes it look that his
ghost is still watching over me.
My mother (God rest her soul) was
my door and she took the door with her.

I wish I could claw out
a space for her in the
partial darkness beyond
but she  refuses
to move from her space in my
soul’s basement in a way I
can not hammer through at all.
Only the heartbeat and
breath we clearly share moves forward.
She was a great dancer
but I could never learn the right steps.
Oh mother, mother dance for me again,
in the distant, distant horizon.

The tongue
     remembers
all the death
     it has tasted.
It teaches us the
     name and memory
of things.
     The aquae of
the  womb’s ocean
     as it dries in the
first gasp of air.
     The vitae  
coughing out  
     so the lungs
can start its
     invisible cycles
of dying
     and renewing.
The taunt
     of the nose  
denying forever  
     the tongue’s
right to taste
     the light of light,
claiming
     the invisible
for itself,
     the visible
for the eyes
     and the mortal
for the body’s
     flapping corpus.
The sal of flesh
     as it tastes the  
lechum of breast.
     The tongue knows
the Unami of vowels
     before the first words
spoken and heard.
     The sweetness of
the first thought
     before it dries in the
sourness of memory.
     That the first honeyed  
almond greeting is refined  
     from bitter goodbyes.
That leaving home
     tastes like oranges.
That love tastes like chocolate
     and the newborn like rice.
The tongue knows
     from its time with the ocean
that the smell of death
      usurps the silence
of a mother’s caress,
     the waves of all her
sobs and tears
     until the sweet salt
is the last everything
     it only always knew.