If I should die, think only this of me:
   That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England.  There shall be
   In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
   Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
   Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
   A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
     Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
   And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
     In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

It seems I have no tears left. They should have fallen—
Their ghosts, if tears have ghosts, did fall—that day
When twenty hounds streamed by me, not yet combed out
But still all equals in their rage of gladness
Upon the scent, made one, like a great dragon
In Blooming Meadow that bends towards the sun
And once bore hops: and on that other day
When I stepped out from the double-shadowed Tower
Into an April morning, stirring and sweet
And warm. Strange solitude was there and silence.
A mightier charm than any in the Tower
Possessed the courtyard. They were changing guard,
Soldiers in line, young English countrymen,
Fair-haired and ruddy, in white tunics. Drums
And fifes were playing “The British Grenadiers.”
The men, the music piercing that solitude
And silence, told me truths I had not dreamed,
And have forgotten since their beauty passed.

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow’st.
    So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
    So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

The night is busy with the growth of stars.  Above us peaceful.  Shiyáázh, my son, fusses in his cradleboard.  The protective rainbow shaped by his father arches over his face to protect him.  In the dark sand below Monster Slayer’s archenemy rises again to pull us off this rock where we’ve taken refuge since winter’s approach.

The wind stops.  Clouds drift across the moon.  We pull water silently from below near the soldier’s feet.  Silence is our cover.  I pull my son close and place my hand on my baby’s cheek to quiet him.  “Shhh, shee’awéé’, shiyázhí, shhh.”  Hush, baby, my beloved, hush.  With my finger I circle the pulse just above his ear.  He makes tiny lapping sounds with his mouth and turns toward my breast for the comfort of my milk.  But my breast is a sieve from which the enemy drinks.  I am dry.

These hands that mixed bread dough for the evening meal, that planted corn and gathered pollen from the tender shoots.  These hands held my husband’s kisses and caressed my baby’s soft bones as he grew inside me.  We sailed the river that led us to the ocean of all beginnings.  The night cries like an owl.  My beloved son’s eyes are full of stars.  A drowning breath in his throat.  Take this map of rainbows and fly, fly, child.