Sea Pines, Family Reunion, Mourning

Sea Pines

Sea pines, short trees

wading in winter storm water

we walk anyway through the

mossy brittle branches

knowing this is the place of deer hooves crows cracking clams in the parking lot and waves: which way is west

as all other directions are silent

even though an entire continent

and all her textures peers over the bank: arboreal myriads clinging to slopes

in the messy breath of the Pacific.

Family Reunion

Husks of hearts rustle against each other. Dry things fall to the floor. The stubborn scrub and oak

filter sunlight while generations

of life's urge meet

in voices overlapping

and kinship finds its way through old and new blocks— shadow-making defenses— some smaller than others,

and some thinning

in the present light.

Mourning

I mourn

on the rise and fall of my breathing.

I pray

inside my lungs,

am reassured of rhythm

and body

in unbearable absence, transforming transcendance

rising, rising on my breath.

All language

is unhinged from surfaces in the tangible world.

I know this day

through its turning wheel of hours, spinning

in a slow blur

under a raw reality waiting to be renamed.