I was born here, and
I belong here, and
I will never leave.
The blue heron's
gray smoke will flow over me
for years
and the wind will decide
all directions
until I am safely and entirely
something else.
I am thinking this
this winter morning
as I sit by the fire
and the fire in its red rack
keeps singing
its crackling song
of transformation
Of course
I wonder about
the mystery
that is surely up there
in starry space
and how some part of me
will go there at last.
But I am talking now
of the way the body speaks,
and the wind, that keeps saying,
firmly, lovingly:
a little while and then this body
will be stone; then
it will be water; then
it will be air.
~ from New and Selected Poems, Volume Two (Beacon Press, 2005)
