Citizen

The only citizenship I have was given to me 
by the Brooklyn trees. The trees of heaven, now ghost trees; 
the trees of Canarsie: little-leaf lindens, silver maples, Norway 
maples, and their little ship of seeds like ships on the Atlantic. 
Or their paired tinted samaras which have wings and 
thus love to spiral and flutter down to the soil in the autumn 
gardens where I sometimes sit and try to listen 
to the labor of aquifers underground, the groan of seeds. 
My sister who died and is now underground must be one of 
those seeds. The white seeds, milky and deciduous, grow up to 
feed Carolina wrens, Buteo hawks and laughing gulls, these 
birds of Brooklyn are my companions when I sleep and dream 
that I’m singing in my sister’s voice, or that I’m a bird of 
paradise, high and mauve above a mountain, 
gliding over a blue marina, and in that dream I have on my 
head a crown of fuchsia, and on my feet the bronze 
hooves of white horses, the animals of grief. 
Once, in the slice of the dark, returning 
from the day’s labor, with rose apples in my knapsack, and 
suddenly remembering something funny my sister had once 
said, I laughed in the dark and blessed myself. Then flush with 
images of how we used to climb trees together as children, and 
knowing that I’m invisible in this city of gilded harbors
anyway, I thought, though I did not do it, I thought I might 
climb the bark and silk of this maple tree
I saw and jostle with black ants and vine dust, and go higher 
and higher, as in my childhood until I reached the dome of the 
tree. And from that high up, look toward the ports and islands 
and tidal estuaries of the city and see them as silver 
constellations held together by a finger of darkness; 
Or toward the leafy cloud of the Botanical Garden 
where goldenrods, asters and canna lilies sleep in midnight sap 
and await resurrection by light. Perhaps, my sister is only 
asleep. Or toward the bay of the Hudson, near the Little Red 
Lighthouse, where the Atlantic meets the shore, and see my 
ancestors rise as mist from the ocean. 
I thought I might look from my tree and see the mossy acres of 
Hart Island, that burial ground of strangers and citizens, 
where all those we’ve lost are under the white dwarf stars of 
headstones. The spectral multitude. As if while we slept, the 
graves, on their own, began to spread 
from plot to plot, multiplying all over the face of the earth. 
It is not true that I praise the dead. I merely ask them to teach 
me their song.