All Souls Crossing

Black pond coming off the sturdy pines

Through shaking banks of phlox

To the simple white cottage. Why not here?

All of us queuing up politely by the screen door

Until we remember, as at first it’s hard to remember,

The habit of souls no longer clothed in bodies so new—

And will it be broad as a whale path, the crossing?

Or thin as willow bark strips—dark stature

Of your father, fire in hand, rising to my grandfather’s knock,

Your brother a boy again under a thatch of bangs

Barefoot on a flying chase. Think of it now

Before white clouds drum and you haven’t a minute

As soul flies its quick heel through slender squares

Of window screen, into the loose whispers of hide-and-seek

Under beach plum, collapsing lawn chairs, crazy-eighting

In and out of house and garden, the shoved scud

Of an upstairs bed sliding, a slammed door’s catch and hit.

Quick, slip into the garden’s musk-rut, deliberate

As a dozen honeybees at work, headfirst into blue throats

Of catnip. Stock-still under capes of sunflowers,

A white-throated sparrow balances, his one song

Repeating in the brassy, ever-changing light

Before earth goes and the curtains pressing

To window and jamb are suddenly still.