Can I make your ashes
as solid as the air?
Inner doors keep you

from rising in gusts,
gritting the floor
from here to the garden.

I put you between squash
and the remains of basil
killed by early frost.

Some stalks escape the shears.
Children gather inflorescence
into paintbrushes

weary of so much slaughter.
They kneel into the aroma,
mistaken for praying.

Bees bend one last flower
sepal to stem, sated
and heavy. Far from home.

I am standing waves
of one million particles
strung against others
made of string
too weighty to remain
too light to survive.
I can’t contact
you at this octave
not cool enough
for proper conduction
soil littered, coppery
roots stretch like 
the jaws of buried whales.

inside weather and 8/10
of the air is held between
the bodies of migrating birds.

I can’t predict where
the storms are headed,
perhaps you can help me.

The summer we read Proust
you sent a postcard of him.
Out of respect I placed it on the fridge.

Weeks later, we noticed he had died,
and took it down so as not to
overwhelm the produce.

Cold and closed, each green
tidal lull lingers over rocks.

A line of pelicans heads home.
Before you arrived, days passed slower.

Th salt-grass, the anemone
blossom in cycles set up by the moon.

I wait like a spring tide.
Photos will prove changes

happen in increments.
Birds wait for sand *****,

limpets, littoral fish.
You practice naming each in order.