I pass
ninety days
in an ango,
enclosed
within my rainy season's soul
as hydrangea open blue cold in the heat.
Then again
I spend nine hours,
a novena,
reciting
Maria plena
to understand kindness.
It's the dry season now,
in Japan and Portugal,
full of fires
and pilgrimage.
Later, in autumn, I may ask to join Segaki
or an All Souls feast.
Offering food,
I understand ghosts want to see me eat, meet me in my body,
observe, regret, rant.
Afterward, ghosts retreat.
I try to step back, but can't.
I remember the cold blue blooms in rain- soaked June,
Too soon they dry and die.
During my novena
I pick milkweed bursting like stars for the dead
as
Molded sugar bones melt into early clouds of snow.
The ghosts met here will come again, or send others,
when another season turns.
No matter how much I pray,
the dead never stay away,
remain hungry.
