The land where my brother is buried
next to him my father
next to him my grandfather
grandmother
and one day my mother:
is sacred.

Haunting and hoping at once
my feet are stuck to the ground
then my knees
my forehead.
I bow close to the ground and examine all that grows from it.

Wild mosses and weeds next to
shrubs planted by the still-living, the mourners.

My eyes lift. I see that I am actually quite high.
We buried them on a mountain. Yes.

Poetry is my portable sacred ground,
a space to lay all that lives and dies in me.
I lay it there so that I need not carry it anymore; or
because I cannot carry it anymore.
or: because when it is on the pages, I can see
just exactly what it was I carried
and how.

Ashes, I will become ashes,
scattered here, lighter than air
and then: it will be me who is carried.
high – carried high.