When I scatter bird seed,
when I ask about the doves
and whether to feed the geese
as she did, when I wonder
who flies with them.
When I write letters to no one
each morning. When I unpack
picture frames, perfume,
earrings, every small thing
people doing their jobs
have bundled in plastic.
When a peacock, impossibly
white and black, appears
at our roadside preening
its feathers, eyespots blinking out
like the memory of a dream.
When I no longer see her vanishing,
only this splendid ghost for which
grief is a poisonous plant
devoured to grow luminous.