Nangángalúluwâ

[the spirits visit on All Souls Day]


Remember when the wilderness was a clearing 
white as sugar, oceans unsinged by oil and fire? Beaches 

clean as the floors of the dormitory where the ancestors
sleep by day and rouse at the summons of the moon—

Here they are, bringing offerings of tattered bird feathers 
to your door; and that one earring you'd given up for lost.

That isn't smoke or fog, but their sheets drying in the wind. 
By the steps, a puddle in the shape of a hand, with the scar 

you remember just at the base of the thumb. Sometimes, 
feeling tracks through the map of the body faster than 

thought. The body knows, before the mind catches 
up. Why else does a raven perch on the branch, sleek 

in its coat of dark blue-black? Why else does a dove call
so mournfully, fixing you with its brown eye rimmed with sky?