She came again last night—
two, three dreams a week since she left
the body six years ago.
My wife and I were hauling the Indiana oak
beneath which we’d gotten married, lugging it
all the way to Colorado, planting it here
on our mountain. My mother
praised us, recalling for me an old photo
of her and me beneath that tree when I was five,
maybe six, the jeans I was meant to grow into
rolled at the cuffs, knees worn
from playing marbles. The sky was piercingly blue
and tornado-green at the same time—shifting,
it seemed, whenever I glanced at the slash pile
at the edge of the woods where we were told
to avoid the snakes. The hounds were restless,
a gangly blue-speckled pup running into my arms,
whining and whimpering for me to adopt it.
Dark across my heart, I knew the world could not
keep going on. That my breath would one day
cease. I had inconceivably reached
my sixty-eighth year. And all the hours of weeping,
of feeling less than whole, stood like stone
figures at the opening of a tomb. Fog
like talus caves settling. Woodsmoke
clouding my mouth. And still, I wanted to live.
And my mother wanted me to have that tree,
leaning into me, saying, Bring it inside near the willow,
honey, already growing in your chest. And all I knew
was how little I knew. How the crowded years
of the leafy growth of my brain
had brought me only a bit of shade, a slip
of shelter from the rain. Somehow, there were piles of salt
at the base of the tree, stacked like tiny Shinto temples,
circling it. I reached for them and began
throwing handfuls at my mother, saying,
I therefore commit your body to this tree.
Leaf to leaf, branch to branch.
We come from salt, and to salt we return.
It made so little sense, but I knew she needed
to absorb the salt, absorb whatever I threw at her.
That she was my mother drawing me back in.
That I would give birth to her
always, night after night
in my sleep.