Yonder

             “…in her Glimmering Spheare….”

My mother said, I’m losing my mind. My
father reported he had all his teeth.
I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry,
as they say, and that was before they
misplaced their words entirely. Mother,
tell me, are you in the bardo now? I hope
you can talk again. Is there a good time
tomorrow? Right now, the floor needs
vacuuming. So many dust bunnies, so
much of it me. 40,000 skin cells
a minute. 100 hair strands a day. And
my bone tissue? We are outlined in
loss. But you’d be surprised how little
of us there is. More microbes than
our own cells. And how much of our
body is water? Echo asked, Who’s there?,
as Narcissus leaned over his reflection.
Fugitive dye, I say to the pair of ghosts.
As in: loosen your grip, wash away.
But my mother’s not drawing up the
anchor any time soon. Hi, sweets,
she says. I’m here to advise: there is no
view. No heat or cold. No present or
future. Nothing but the slow and sure
movement. Pause. Oh, and by the way,
do you have children? Silence.
Vincent, she yells for my father, rowing
between clouds on his single scull. Maybe
we should adopt. No, he says firmly. Mother
flicks a fly line into a galaxy of ultraviolet
light ignited by hot white dwarfs and
supernovas. Never be sorry, she says. Keep
writing. I did not respond. Are you there?
It was such a strange autumn, so much
rain the chlorophyll did not break down,
the leaves held on, green, until they fell
almost at once, vanishing into the blue.