Matter is Neither Created nor Destroyed

She looks like everyone's 
grandmother now, or everyone's
old mother. The day after Christmas, 
another year will add itself to all 
the others she has lived. 

Or not. But her fortitude 
and perseverance are strong: 
despite lost teeth and weak gums, 
she digs a teaspoon into a triangle
of egg pie with gusto.  A head of soft

white hair, a folio of bones
tucked into a chair, under 
a blanket. She has few 
possessions around her now—
She shakes the carton of juice 

and sips from a straw. How do we 
imagine transcendence, if at all?
I don't know how to say I will probably 
not witness that drift into white 
cotton clefts of beddings, that leap 

beyond the fire releasing the body's water
and oxides. If one is lucky to outlive the other, 
our drifting atoms might make their way 
back to the soil, to the trees, to the soft 
pelt of an animal grazing in the field.