after Mary Oliver

at dawn, my grandmother and i 

walk through the orchard, 

where peaches, tender and heart-shaped,

fall into the soft meat of our palms.

the light clasps its barely calloused fingers

over my grandmother’s frail body, 

her skin the topography of the himalayas, 

her cheeks grooved like the currents of the yangtze, 

where her brother washed ashore facedown, 

where the river ran red for weeks with the blood of families 

shrouded in past tense. 

my grandmother’s body is the product of war and hunger,

is parched orchid blooming from crimson soil. 

she watches me, smooth-faced and young,

boyish voice fluttering over the late summer breeze, 

tells me 

my existence is a miracle she never thought possible. 

as we walk through the orchard of endless sea green trees 

and grass and hills, the earth wrapping its arms around us, 

i see the rotting peach in the ground 

and my grandmother’s brother in the sky 

and the two of us

right here. 

and so what will you do with this brief & gorgeous life,

this precious gift wrapped in your soft hands.

i thought all things must die. i was wrong. 

there are no endings in this world. 

only the start

of every new dawn, a thousand mornings 

waiting to greet you. 

and so my grandmother’s brother comes back

as the light embracing her skin.

and the voices of ghosts

return as the wind--and the song of the birds on the clean blue horizon--

announcing their place, over, and over, in this life. 

and the next. 

and the one after that. 

and so everything, perhaps, starts anew. 

as will my grandmother.

as will myself.

as will this.