If I Were a Poet

We are all water spilled on the ground,
the molecules that were my flesh
mixed with the molecules that were yours.
“We are alive, and then what?”
Water never ponders such things,
because it doesn’t know it’s alive.

But seeing her lying there, still,
still smiling like the day
she discovered dandelions,
we try to imagine
her running through a field
dotted with yellow flowers
on a new earth under a new heaven.

Will she be a child? Forever?
We’re using our fingers
to count the stars;
our language wasn’t made
to ask the right questions.