Ransacking closets, I come up only
with legacies of questionable value.
How are such things to be written into
a will? Dried sprig; five leather buttons
with a lattice pattern, saved from father’s
sweater. A necklace of tiny colored beads;
its pendant of etched carabao horn affixed
with brass bells. I used to know with certainty
where I’d kept the dried stumps of my babies’
cords. Who is watching over my shoulder as I trace
the faces of the long dead in photographs?
Smell of all perishables; a seed rattling
in the heart of green fruit on the tree.
Here are paper flowers with mouths wide enough
to hold votives— They can drift for a time on a blue
surface: forgive me for such little stores of light.