I have been watching the milkweed
give away everything it has.
All summer it laboured
at being green,
at holding the small, striped mouths
of caterpillars.
Now it opens its dry hands.
I do not know how to speak
of a holy death
except to say
I have sat beside a bed
where someone was leaving,
and the ordinary cup of water
became a thing
I carried with both hands.
At birth, too,
we lower our voices,
then laugh, then weep,
then ask whether the child
is warm enough.
The body arrives.
The body is tended.
At the far end, again,
we draw the blanket up.
Perhaps holiness
has something to do with this.
And between those bookends,
the chapters:
the years we hurried,
the door we should have opened,
the peach eaten over the sink
with its sweetness running
to the wrist.
Someone teaches us
how to love badly.
Someone stays
while we learn again.
There are pages
we would tear out
if they did not take
the next page with them.
This morning, beyond the window,
a little wind
lifted the milkweed seeds.
For a moment
they caught in the grass.
Then the wind came again.
