It was green then—the moon,
at the beginning of existence—
all rainforest and fresh paint. Angels
grew chickweed in sky-scarred craters.
We had no language, you understand,
only the possibility of it;
three strands of hibiscus arranged
left to right would mean grandmother;
it could also mean subway or wheelchair.
Read from right to left it could only signify
hummingbird. Another way of saying this:
absence is measured in petals.
There was no word for loss,
we learned that from you.
You ask if angels mourned. Of course,
but to convey mourning we
would uproot every tree in the forest,
move each to where its brother once stood.
The digging took only an hour,
but replanting, months.
(Time, though, did not yet exist,
so this was of little concern.)
The roots we kept healthy in mason jars
of honey and salt; each of us shedding a feather
into the open dirt. We admired the petulant
blue beneath, tossed acorns down to the new Earth.
At the lowest tides, angels leapt
the distance to tend fields of coral;
some harvests became the first phonemes,
others oil refineries and cargo ships,
crates of lithium batteries on a windless day. Tell me,
why did you leave this poem for so long?
When Chuck died, he held an ocean
in his throat and still you wonder
how many times a body can burn
before it is a glass horse
on another man’s shelf; how flames
might resemble anything other
than their own conflagration. Yes,
the hands of this watch are father
and son, chasing a cicada to its shell.
In the beginning there was no light
but we knew the dancing
would soon begin.