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?