There is no poetry where there are no mistakes. - Joy Harjo

But you must have grown out of
a thousand years dreaming
just like I could never imagine you.
You must have
broke open from another sky
to here, because
now I see you as a part of the millions of
other universes that I thought could never occur
in this breathing.
And I know you as myself, traveling.
In your eyes alone are many colonies of stars
and other circling planet motion.

My mother was a songwriter and singer. She is William Blake’s “Little lamb, who made thee / Dost thou know who made thee?” and Alfred Lord Tennyson. She is the traditional Cherokee songs sung at her aunt’s funeral. She is the “Burning Ring of Fire” running away to Independence, Kansas, at sixteen. She is “Crazy” sung by Patsy Cline in a wake of heartache. That was my mother, singing, all those years. My mother’s gifts were trampled by economic necessity and emotional imprisonment.

You're gone now, and I'm still in this predicament called living, Charlie.
I imagine things don't change much when you cross the line.
You're still you.
And I'm still here at the other end of this long, long wave, listening.