She laughed at death,
not to mock it,
but the way you chuckle
at a small child who covers his face
and thinks you can’t see him.
Death isn’t the end of us,
she explained,
only a turning inside out.
She always talked about death
when we walked in the forest,
stopping at the biggest trees
to rest her cheek against their trunks.
Hello, Lorna, she’d say.
Hello, Gail.
Hello, Dad.
I still feel it
when I walk among the trees
me breathing in one gas
and out the other
while the trees
do the same
in reverse.
A turning inside out.
My daughter asked me the other day
why I gave the trees names,
and I just smiled and said,
“I didn’t.”