Stations of the Sea

Regarding springtime, what is there to conclude?

One wing, I fall,

a third of the sum of flying.

Once forsaken, I remain

hidden in the dust, a mortal threshold

unearthed by crying.

Crying, my body turns to dark petals.

And of all the rooms in my childhood,

God was the largest

and most empty.

Of all my playmates,

my buried brother was the quietest,

never giving away my hiding place

where, my mother’s Little-Know-Nothing,

I still await the dawning in my heart

of a name my mother and father never gave me,

my brothers and sisters never called me,

the name foretold

prior to my birth on any tree.

Among the roots, the dead

teem, memory of them

a storied amber risen

in my flesh.

Throughout the leaves, the wind,

unsurrounded, is reciting

the stations of the sea.