Twenty-Third

And at the picnic table under the ancient elms,

one of my parents turned to me and said:

“We hope you end up here,”

where the shade relieves the light, where we sit

in some beneficence—and I felt the shape of the finite

after my ether life: the ratio, in all dappling,

of dark to bright; and yet how brief my stay would be

under the trees, because the voice I’d heard

could not cradle me, could no longer keep me

in greenery; and I would have to say good-bye

again, make my way across the white

California sand and back: or am I now creating

the helplessness I heard those words express,

the psalm torn like a map in my hands?