Blown Like Seed

Now that the bones are gone, who lives in the final dust?  —Pablo Neruda

Look for me under your boot soles says Whitman;

   but my bones will long be dust –

blown and settled, settled and blown

      before the wren sings her brood to dream.

And if my dust slips through butternut forests

   on the paw pad of a lynx, what atoms remain

      will leap in joy as rain dribbles bits and parts

    into crevices of stone to stay,

to sprout meadowsweet or fern –

   or even bleed into ground water that seeps into the sea.

Ahh – to be part of a heaving mass of peak and trough,

      particles of salt kissing an echo of my lips.