My mother took the bag from its box— 
home to my father’s ashes for thirteen years— 
and poured its heft into a form she made  
on the potter’s wheel—a vase, damp and unfired. 
She pinched the rotating lip, and sealed the clay  
perfectly shut, a technique I haven’t yet mastered.

We planned to launch it like a football at low tide,  
but when we arrived, the beach was lined with people, 
and there was no subtle way for my brother to toss it out past  
the children kneeling in the surf, the surfers awaiting the break. 

To carry my father out, arm above my head, heavy with him— 
or hold him against my chest, side-stroking  
with one hand while the clay disintegrated into the water— 
I wasn’t dressed for it.

Instead, we dropped him in the water by the docks  
by the old Shrimp Shack, all 6’4” of him, 
and I watched the vessel slowly descend, a few bubbles  
emerging as if the last breath left in a dying lung.

We’d lift gin from your mother’s cabinet  
and walk the hallways of Robert Asp Middle  
taking swigs in plain sight from a 20 oz  
Pepsi Clear, your gap tooth flashing  
at teachers we passed, your hands forgetting  
to pass the bottle, screwing and unscrewing  
the cap. After that I moved. We lost track.  
The news was six months old by the time  
I heard. When they don’t say what happened  
you know what happened. We used to catch  
rides from highschoolers out to the Red to jump  
the bridge. Water thick with clay. Red with clay.  
We kept close watch for underwater logs.  
Smoked Menthols. A 40-foot drop into swirls  
of currents. One time you stayed under  
and kicked downstream to trick me. Nervous,  
I stared at the surface for signs. No signs.  
I stumbled down the bank to dive in.  
The moment you were certain you had me  
the valley cracked with your laughter.

The wind has come up  
and now there is a cloud behind the mountain.   
How many times did she tell me the story   
of my birth? The story ended when she’d say,  
and that was the happiest day of my life, and  
I’d feel a little sad because I’d had no child  
and would never have a day like hers. Sometimes,  
I can see the river bottom and its glitter  
of stones. Then a fish leaps in sunlight rippling  
the surface. Sometimes, I listen to the birds,  
our seers, the pileated always laughing. I’ve read  
the dead in dreams are never dead,  
and yes, it is their aliveness that is reassuring,  
their going on even as they leave us here. Just now  
the shadow of wings, and a far-off child’s voice  
shouting  Hey, Mom.

The dead do
     what they want
which is nothing—

sit there, mantled,
     or made real
by photographs

in silver frames,
     or less real
by our many ministrations.

Dusting. Bleach. The world
     swept, ordered,
seemingly unending.

The dead, listless,
     lazy, grow tired
& turn off the TV—

or like a father passed
     out in an easy chair
during the evening news

      what’s watched now
does the watching.

In a poem I love, the husband slices open 
a pepper to find a church, 

but here at the sink I’ve found a house, and 
inside, the rattling seeds of a chandelier. 

It doesn’t matter. My husband is too by himself 
in the hospital, and in our home at the window I stand 

alone for the first time in almost thirty years. Then, 
he’d rushed out into the dark, summoned to 

his father’s deathbed. But I wasn’t really alone. 
My toddler son slept, his mouth slightly open 

and red and wet inside like a fledgling’s, 
my daughter grew within me, close 

as a locket on a chain. When my husband returned, 
I remember he talked of the rattle. The death rattle. 

The children are now inside their own homes
asleep, curled around their beloveds. But all so young 

yet, they do not think we will ever die. 
In their garden beds, if they are dreaming of seeds 

and light, they are dreaming of little blazes
growing hotter. They are not dreaming of wind

and flickering. And, certainly, they are not
dreaming of smoke.

The air tonight is a nesting 
doll. The call of cicadas 
around the sound of bird 
settling into nest around 
the rustling of something 
beyond the yard in the 
leaves around the smell 
of jasmine around the 
giving away of consciousness 
that surrounds 
what might be the last 
of the day’s worries or 
the start of the night’s 
fears. How often is it, 
after a pandemic and 
during climate rages, 
to have a seed of fear 
stuck into our teeth, a pea 
beneath our mattress. 
So perhaps the jasmine 
masks decomposition 
that will bloom in tomorrow’s 
sun. Perhaps the distant stirring 
is a coyote that will take 
the neighbor’s cat in its jaw 
and shake. Perhaps even 
the night air carries virus. 
What’s calming in the world 
has always been a mask. Ask 
the remains of a small child 
found in a cave in Siberia with 
tooth marks in bone. Ask 
the child’s mother, long dissolved 
into breath distributed across 
the globe and water long traveled 
to the ocean. Ask that nesting bird 
so weary it doesn’t hear 
the neighbor’s cat. Who 
are we rooting for on this earth?