The little dogwood sapling
that keeps my father
spellbound, earthbound
is trying to bloom
from its late winter rut,
the maybe of pink
enough for me now.

The girl with the tangled hair
always tangled
who gathers grass widows
in the spring
her hands stained lace
with the wilting.

Her hair unwilling–
a rat’s nest or
a nest of bunnies
when the tractor comes calling
with its cold-blooded blades
leaving behind all the broken hairs
of her little heart.

At the end of his life
my father didn’t know
he was there.
Couldn’t have known
as he sat down
in his rocking chair
that he would rise
as ash under a dogwood tree.

My brother digging
through his last sliver of light
through the nagging blur of insects,
the glittering pockets of fireflies
that once he would have
plucked from the air
one by one
even beyond this gloaming.

But tonight he lets them be
just be–
so he can dig the hole
that will keep his father quiet
under the dogwood.
My brother who once
was a boy
forcing these last embers of twilight
into a glass jar—
surprised to find in the morning
that death and dawn
had come for them together.

Now he swats them away.
They are only bugs after all,
the hair on my head
untangled finally,
the dogwood
just a tree
planted in my heart
trying to bloom pink—
ash & petals
waking up the ground.