for Yvonne

My thumb paces the lid. I never touched her urn or looked
at the ashes until now.

Shawled by Spanish moss, an oak faces the warm sea,
in September an act of courage.

Scrub pine, kudzu, flies—green, green, green—Florida
you are viciously alive.

Can there be a world without death and dark veils on trees?
Tell me how to mourn in you.

The sky arches like an extension of the sea: it takes a storm
to see change. I missed the storm—

a cane, a slower gait—until I walked the barren trail
it tore through me. I scatter

her ashes. Dragonflies thread the rising air, a green scent:
pine, salt, sap, kin.