name

For Daddy

write my name in the snow

spell it all capital letters

so you can see it from heaven

shovel your love like a cloud

spell it all in capital letters

as if snow is forever

shovel your love like a cloud

as if love could be frozen

as if snow is forever

as if spelling is spelling

as if love could be frozen

and kept

as if spelling is spell

and my name is a prayer

kept in your heart

which is cold now

and my name is a prayer

so you can feel it from heaven

which is cold

like my name in the snow

One day my father shoveled my name into the snow in the front yard. Available to an aerial view, more like his view now in the way that I think of it. The way I think of it is that as an ancestor my father is still writing my name upon the world. And where will I see it? Will I see my name and its meaning (helper of humanity) in the trees, the masked faces of my community members, in possibilities growing up all around me? I am deepening my idea of heaven. Maybe heaven is the way we learn to know ourselves through the writing of our loved ones on the surface of the earth. Maybe heaven is a poem, a spell, a name, an infinite presence. I’m pretty sure my mom took this portrait of “me.” Not of my body, but of my name preserved for longer than the snow lasted. And one day my writing upon the face of this earth will only be known by those who see themselves in it, and remember. And maybe also in the earth herself, maybe also in the universe which can know and can feel this.