Your ashes falling
from our hands to the creek grass,
a fish leaps out, in.

for Mack

Your ashes falling
from our hands to the creek grass,
you’re everywhere now.

for Mack

Your ashes falling
from our hands to the creek grass,
a butterfly lands.

for Mack

Your ashes falling
from our hands to the creek grass
where small crane’s-bill grows.

for Mack

The creek, filled with rain,
I walk through town as it wakes,
and now, we begin.

Nine months without you, Mack.

In this in-between,
August goldenrod shoulders
in, glowing, knowing.

Everything dripping
as sunrise burns off low fog —
I walk through our home.

Dark, rainless clouds rest
while swifts turn in wide circles,
you rest and you turn.

I sure needed you,
even now, under bright skies,
I think of you here.

You’re here with me, still
if I can really believe
you’re now everywhere.

I tell your stories —
you at my side for it all,
and loving the world.

You’re still alongside
every ecstatic, tender
blooming, flying thing.

Sparrows at the creek,
too small to identify,
the tenderest life.

I set out to walk,
swamp milkweed glows in the fog,
endless homecoming.

True brown-eyed Susans,
us two were holy beings
out for a long walk.

At home in the world,
every wildflower wild,
thrilled to be here.

The light shines on us —
on long mornings and long days,
we don’t know our luck.

The moon on its back,
I wake up thinking of you,
us, under dawn sky.

We always begin —
even when hearts are broken,
they’ll leap again still.

Cattails and loosestrife,
tall now, just past the midpoint —
the light is changing.