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Dear Future: It’s strange how much
 you resemble the past, all the houses
Gone dark, the rooms where we lived
 so many lives: the ruptured sofa
Groaning as we read the book about the rabbit,
 the kitchen table shattered with flour
For bread, all vanished into an emptiness
 thirsty as old iron, a plowshare
Left in a fallow field for decades beside
 a snakeskin wound through the eyehole
Of a steer’s skull. Dear Future: I am still
 standing there, a shadow at the threshold.
My mother was the door through which
 I entered the light. Now she is gone
Alone through her own vanishing door.

With the hands of my heart
 I would claw out a place
For her in the darkness beyond
 breath, I would break through
The silence after heartbeat
 with another rhythm hammered
On the hide drumhead of death.
 It would sound like the ghost
Of Professor Longhair raging
 for goat’s blood from the bowl
I hold up in the underworld, that great
 New Orleans shuffle of hers, so she can
Dance again, with the hands of my heart.

No one in the family thought I could do anything
 practical in this world, Mother, but look:
I have raised out of the core of the firmament
 of my being a great lighthouse made
Of what looks like gleaming obsidian but
 in fact, if there are facts anymore, is nothing
But the grief of my time on this earth. It stands
 on the edge of the valley of living fog
Where you have chosen to wander, flashing
 its warning: do not turn back, do not
Think of us here still going on, because
 life doesn’t do that, we are here
On the wrecking stones of existence
 just like you. Its light goes on
As long as I go on. So go on. And there, look
 how solid it stands. Dear Future: See what I did?