—from Spirit of Wild

Look for me under your boot soles says Whitman;
but my bones will long be dust –
blown and settled, settled and blown
before the wren sings her brood to dream.
And if my dust slips through butternut forests
on the paw pad of a lynx, what atoms remain
will leap in joy as rain dribbles bits and parts
into crevices of stone to stay,
to sprout meadowsweet or fern –
or even bleed into ground water that seeps into the sea.
Ahh – to be part of a heaving mass of peak and trough,
particles of salt kissing an echo of my lips.