My grandmother communes with my mother
by knocking over the cumin when she needs cumin.
She forgets where she put it but then there’s the cumin
falling from the shelf because who else but her own mother.
My grandfather visits in dreams, stands squat beside me,
right on the seawall beside me, no sign of pain or age;
ruffles my head then smiles, chuckles and shakes his own head
as wilding seagulls churn a squall about us that swallows me.
My mother believes to be true the visits from her mother
and I believe there’s no reason to really doubt
the veracity of her belief or even that this very belief
is the channel manifesting the visits from her mother.
Every time my grandfather visits me in the seawall dream,
I die as an explosion of feathers and down, smothering
him ever so softly with every lost moment I failed
to give over to flight instead of grounding us in dream.
Next time he shows up, before I smithereen my dream,
I’m going to ask him when he ever plans to visit my mother.
Image from Flickr.
