THAT DAY

On the day my mother died
of cancer, afterwards
on that scorching
blue March afternoon,

a helicopter wrecked the sky
with sounds so giant,
an engine’s dirge to drown
my oiled grief

as I held our baby daughter
in the thickly green backyard,

desired to become a cloud
or bud before the bloom

beyond flesh and toil
just this once.

Now with the passage
of these eighteen years,
every hummingbird I see

writes mom’s name in nectar
on sweet hibiscus flowers
outside clear windows
of warm homes,

and the hum-scented alphabet
spells out quite well
how life and death
shall engulf us all one day,

as we learn to read and hear
and fly inside expansive
quiet

time and time
again.