I sat down with grandmother oak
there on a blanket she had woven
of clovers and sweet violets
where the fat bees cobble about.
She wrapped me in her scented boughs
and gently held all parts of me –
the flesh, the brittle fragments,
the embers, the salt water and the bone –
with soft and steady breaths she blew
the shadows from my shoulders
and asked only in return of me
that I might be with her a while and,
in ancient, long-forgotten psalms,
that she might sing me home.
