This Bridge Across

A moment comes to me

and it’s a lot like the dead

who get in the way sometimes

hanging around, with their ranks

growing bigger by the second

and the game of tag they play

claiming whoever happens by.

I try to put them off

but the space between us

is like a country growing closer

which has a language I know

more and more of me is

growing up inside of, and

the clincher is the nothing

for me to do inside here

except to face my dead

as the spirits they are,

find the parts of me in them—

call them back with my words.

Ancestor worship or prayer?

It’s a kind of getting by—

an extension of living

beyond my self my people taught me,

and each moment is a boundary

I will throw this bridge across.