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Poem as my mother's burial approaches

 

[ash natural as sunsets]

 

Ash natural as sunsets

As this brook here,

Nothing to fear, some say,

The silence is the main aspect,

And strange forever, and maybe

A heaven with all hope restored;

For now, it’s quiet, except for the world,

Having a field day, doing its rounds,

Utterly convinced of its opinions,

 

Each green shoot, leaf, blade of grass

And dewdrop full of its passion,

Which proves some motion lives on

In these unruly actions of a daily grind;

The wind picks up, lies down to sleep,

The rain visits these graves,

Then leaves again for other work. It’s sunset

To weep, to want to wash away fragility;

Why couldn’t what was boisterously young,

 

Running with your namesake pig in spring,

Stay caught in the moment of best beauty?

The thing that grows vegetables

Shakes our bones out to their full height,

We’re on a conveyor belt, a pulse that goes,

There’s a plot and it continues, in its throes;

This is God’s time, all other knowledge unclear,

We can imagine an invisible deep

Never-flagging sleep for seconds,

 

But don’t know what to do with a tree

That grows upside down in the earth,

Drinking the dark darknesses like a backward sun.

I believe you’re safe here, can climb down

To these roots, where all of us will be soon,

Playing on whatever oblivion’s branches are –

Leaping without moving like a game of tag,

Each kid frozen, waiting to be set free to bolt.

How much we expected when we stood like that.

 

Autumn Equinox, September 23rd, 2026

T Swift

 

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