MY MOTHER’S KEYS

When I took my keys 

from my pocket

something about them

was different.

They were lighter 

than before.

For five years

I've carried my mother’s 

three keys on my key ring.

Today I turned them in.

Her apartment is

no longer hers.

It is somebody else’s 

now. How quickly

the deceased are replaced 

by the living.

There are only two keys

on my key ring today,

the keys to a house

my mother gave me.

The keys look so lonely there

by themselves 

side by side, like strangers 

not knowing what to say. 

Like grief and gratitude

meeting for the first time.

I hold them in the palm 

of my open hand 

and think: 21 grams. 

Could it be that 

the weight of the missing 

keys is the same 

as the weight 

of an ascended soul?

THE BONFIRE*

Any day now

the Neptune Society

will be calling 

to tell me 

that my mother’s 

ashes, that are in transit,

have arrived.

You should burn yourself completely. 

If you do not burn yourself completely, 

then a trace of yourself will be left 

in what you do.

Suzuki Roshi said this 

in a book I just happen 

to be reading right now. 

The timing of the quote

took my breath away.

There is no trace 

of my mother anymore.

Fire has had its way 

with her—which is what 

she wanted. She wanted 

her human form to be 

disrobed of its flesh 

and bone by flame 

when the time came.

I strive daily,

especially now,

to follow in my mother’s 

footsteps, by cremating 

my experience as I live it, 

by trying to cleanse myself 

of conflict and contraction,

so that I might become one

with the inner light of spaciousness 

and the love that resides there.

I want every day to be

a good bonfire,

where my energy burns 

clean and pure, while the self 

goes easefully

up in smoke.

*Inspired by Reverse Meditation: How to Use Your Pain and Most Difficult Emotions as the Doorway to Inner Freedom, by Andrew Holecek.

AN OCTAVE APART

We shared a music.

Though you are

 

no longer here

I continue 

to feel you 

close by.

We are still

together, and 

what's different is 

there's now

just an octave 

between us.

SPEECHLESS*

When a word
is pronounced

we speak it,
we breathe it,

we sound
all its syllables out

in order to
activate its meaning,

its very spirit. 
When the hospital

called to tell me
that my mother

had breathed
her last breath

and used pronounced
to say she had passed

the paradox of the word's meanings
left me speechless.

*In memory of Patricia Marilyn Martin