Rain pelting my roof tonight sounds like sand from
Holy Land that scoured the lid of my father's coffin.

The year before, as he swam in a timeless azheimeric
sleep, I kissed his forehead, and whispered Goodbye.

A year later, caught in blustery rainstorm dibbling
New Mexico's desert, I read on a mesa's withered
brow:

What am I to myself
the must be remembered
insisted upon
so often?