Voices Sift

Now that I have died and
the electricity of my mind has quieted,
I can see the spaces between atoms.
The solitariness of my world has spread:
the skin over my hand,
the boulder in the shade
diaphanous.
It no longer hurts to stare at the sun

I cannot see the living except as smears,
their breath the color of grass in August
swirls through mouths and nostrils,
seeps into the outlines of musculature,
disintegrates in green sparkles.
I recognize my family by their heights and postures.
They move together, embrace and blur.
I reach as if they were a blanket I could wrap around me,
but my fingers cannot find the edge.

Words arc from my wife's mouth.
I place my ear to her lips,
but her voice passes through me.
Her mind ripples in the wind of her ideas.
Outside our backdoor, I sift comfortably into the boulder.
It slowly resonates with our voices.
I hear myself talking slow and low.
I silence myself to hear my family speak,
but it’s my voice that rolls by again when
I am at last ready to listen.