After dying
I say we are given
a little time, a lull
    of farewell
that delays our forgetting
   like a pool in the creek sweep
placed just so
for us who, just beginning,
have come so far
already
            —to this stillness
                into which trees
             reflect once more
as we too
           reflect in our familiar way
          like travelers of open lands
who pause before
the strangeness of trees
    and ponder the dappled light.
                                                 I say
                                                       the love we’ve known
                        will be there in the clothing
                                         of our having lived
there in long grasses
        before the shade of trees
         where our words will start
         to bend
         like water over stone, as whatever
we were begins
                 to slide away
                 as if from the shoulders
of our dearest love—
       and what then
  startles is not a naked
ness so familiar we
 shatter at our ever
     having forgotten it,
but rather our release
       from this longing
to say


Twentieth poem from an unpublished collection, Twenty Poems to the Beloved
Published in Sky Island Journal, #10, Fall, 2019