A hummingbird hovers above the branches outside the window.
Soon the earth will rise again.
Waking from earth’s sleep,
green leaves begin to emerge.
Tiny purple flowers bloom like tiny notes of music.
Háshínee’, and so it is.
We called you loved one;  we called you   daughter,   sister,   wife,   mother,   grandmother;
we called you.   friend,    teacher.
After we have feasted in your honor, remembered you in tender ways,
told stories of you,
and the rain has washed away our tears,
we will give you back to the other side.
  We will release you.
                   We will sing you back to your relatives,
                                sing you back to the places where you once walked,
                                          and return you to the stars.
                                                           Háshínee’, and so it is.
                                                             You will return to us
                                                            in the changing season
                                          of a hummingbird hovering above a branch
                                            in the season of green leaves emerging,
                                 in the notes of tiny purple flowers singing in the rain. 

^{*Háshínee’ is a Navajo female term of endearment}

This is what was bequeathed us:
This earth the beloved left
And, leaving,
Left to us.

No other world
But this one:
Willows and the river
And the factory
With its black smokestacks.

No other shore, only this bank
On which the living gather.

No meaning but what we find here.
No purpose but what we make.

That, and the beloved’s clear instructions:
Turn me into song; sing me awake.

Orchids are sprouting from the floorboards. 
Orchids are gushing out from the faucets. 
The cat mews orchids from his mouth. 
His whiskers are also orchids.
The grass is sprouting orchids. 
It is becoming mostly orchids. 
The trees are filled with orchids. 
The tire swing is twirling with orchids. 
The sunlight on the wet cement is a white orchid.
The car’s tires leave a trail of orchids. 
A bouquet of orchids lifts from its tailpipe.
Teenagers are texting each other pictures 
of orchids on their phones, which are also orchids. 
Old men in orchid penny loafers 
furiously trade orchids. 
Mothers fill bottles with warm orchids 
to feed their infants, who are orchids themselves. 
Their coos are a kind of orchid. 
The clouds are all orchids. 
They are raining orchids. 
The walls are all orchids, 
the teapot is an orchid, 
the blank easel is an orchid, 
and this cold is an orchid. Oh,
Lydia, we miss you terribly.     

Sun makes the day new.
Tiny green plants emerge from earth.
Birds are singing the sky into place.
There is nowhere else I want to be but here.
I lean into the rhythm of your heart to see where it will take us.
We gallop into a warm, southern wind.
I link my legs to yours and we ride together,
Toward the ancient encampment of our relatives.
Where have you been? they ask.
And what has taken you so long?
That night after eating, singing, and dancing
We lay together under the stars.
We know ourselves to be part of mystery.
It is unspeakable.
It is everlasting.
It is for keeps.

                              MARCH 4, 2013, CHAMPAIGN, ILLINOIS

I had no idea that the gate I would step through 
to finally enter this world 

would be the space my brother's body made. He was 
a little taller than me: a young man 

but grown, himself by then, 
done at twenty-eight, having folded every sheet, 

rinsed every glass he would ever rinse under the cold 
and running water. 

This is what you have been waiting for, he used to say to me. 
And I'd say, What? 

And he'd say, This—holding up my cheese and mustard sandwich. 
And I'd say, What? 

And he'd say, This, sort of looking around. 

There are more songs in the far corners
           of my soul
Than I shall ever be able to sing.
I shall go away long before they are
           all expressed
And they will wait for another life, for
           more suffering,
To give them birth; another life and many
           more tears
And love, to make them open their eyes to
           the light.
It will take many lives to express all
           the songs
I hear singing to themselves day and night.

The world will keep trudging through time without us

When we lift from the story contest to fly home

We will be as falling stars to those watching from the edge

Of grief and heartbreak

Maybe then we will see the design of the two-minded creature 

And know why half the world fights righteously for greedy masters 

And the other half is nailing it all back together

Through the smoke of cooking fires, lovers’ trysts, and endless 

Human industry—

Maybe then, beloved rascal

We will find each other again in the timeless weave of breathing

We will sit under the trees in the shadow of earth sorrows 

Watch hyenas drink rain, and laugh.

Today my brother brought over a piece of the ark
wrapped in a white plastic grocery bag.

He set the bag on my dining table, unknotted it,
peeled it away, revealing a foot-long fracture of wood.
He took a step back and gestured toward it
with his arms and open palms—

          It’s the ark, he said.
          You mean Noah’s ark? I asked.
          What other ark is there? he answered.

          Read the inscription, he told me.
          It tells what’s going to happen at the end.
          What end? I wanted to know.
          He laughed, What do you mean, ‘What end?’
          The end end.

Then he lifted it out. The plastic bag rattled.
His fingers were silkened by pipe blisters.
He held the jagged piece of wood so gently.
I had forgotten my brother could be gentle.

He set it on the table the way people on television
set things when they’re afraid those things might blow up
or go off—he set it right next to my empty coffee cup.

It was no ark—
it was the broken end of a picture frame
with a floral design carved into its surface.

He put his head in his hands—

          I shouldn’t show you this—
          God, why did I show her this?
          It’s ancient—O, God,
          this is so old.
         
          Fine, I gave in. Where did you get it?
          The girl, he said. O, the girl.
          What girl? I asked.
          You’ll wish you never knew, he told me.

I watched him drag his wrecked fingers
over the chipped flower-work of the wood—

          You should read it. But, O, you can’t take it—
          no matter how many books you’ve read.

He was wrong. I could take the ark.
I could even take his marvelously fucked fingers.
The way they almost glittered.

It was the animals—the animals I could not take—

they came up the walkway into my house,
cracked the doorframe with their hooves and hips,
marched past me, into my kitchen, into my brother,

tails snaking across my feet before disappearing
like retracting vacuum cords into the hollows
of my brother’s clavicles, tusks scraping the walls,

reaching out for him—wildebeests, pigs,
the oryxes with their black matching horns,
javelinas, jaguars, pumas, raptors. The ocelots
with their mathematical faces. So many kinds of goat.
So many kinds of creature.

I wanted to follow them, to get to the bottom of it,
but my brother stopped me—

          This is serious, he said.
          You have to understand.
          It can save you.

So I sat down, with my brother ruined open like that,
and two by two the fantastical beasts
parading him. I sat, as the water fell against my ankles,
built itself up around me, filled my coffee cup
before floating it away from the table.

My brother—teeming with shadows—
a hull of bones, lit by tooth and tusk,
lifting his ark high in the air.