Spirit

She saw her cousin that day
supporting the clouds over Lake Erie
with his translucent arms of light

he was hovering spirit, rhubarb poppy
sliver of sunset, illuminating
the purgatory between lake and sky

she saw him rejoicing, in syncopated waves
over the breakwall, that divided peace
from an October windstorm.

Warren, her grandfather, ancestors lost at sea,
were each a vein of the tree spreading
down brilliant limbs of light,
across the merciless lake water.

She drove the highway, mouth open,
smiling with disbelief,
that this omnipotent devotion
followed her, and wouldn't leave.

(I wrote this a few years after my cousin Warren was killed on his motorcycle...)