Above the decaying bodies,
even the markers fade, falter
at a pace I can’t conceive.
So-and-so carved this-or-that
for what’s-his-name. How long
did it take to make my son?
*
In one hollow
of the graveyard, the ice
has melted, pooled,
and refrozen so
the ice pond’s center
is a cedar.
*
In the world of forms, training
on the mid-distance treeline,
I see more rain than I feel.
O the joy to waken in the palace of my kind.
*
Tight grove of cedars I’d never been in,
all with multiple trunks, like vapor-gnarls
that frenzy from the fissure, make the oracle
rave, the priest interpret, the supplicants
behave. I ask the grove my question,
then makeshift its python-answer.