for Haley and Sarah
In Bangkok, today, is King Bhumibol Adulyadej’s
cremation.
Remember when we grew up in that nation how
the four of us
could scan anything with a cardboard Star Trek
tricorder?
I was captain, Katie medical officer, and you two—
the twin engineers in our imaginations.
It’s October, fifteen years later. I live in Dallas.
Katie’s a nurse in Kansas City, and the two of you
are pregnant on opposite sides of the globe.
Your parents are dying of cancers.
On the radio last night, I learned that in Japan
a family picks up the skeleton with chopsticks,
places it bone by bone in the urn.
In Okinawa, in October, morning incense burns.
There’s worry about typhoons.
In Atlanta, in October, dusk spoons into the hills.
Leaves turn on spider silk.
In the Delta quadrant of the Milky Way, two centuries from now,
a silver ship drifts through radiation.
I’m not sure what I’m injecting into the conversation.
All I do is orbit the edge of your upended worlds
like the rest of your Facebook friends, voyeur to your voyage—
a slip-stream of crossed stars.
In hospitals in Atlanta and Okinawa, ultrasonographers beam
on screen the grainy images of humanoids.
Your mom transports to Japan to make first and last contact.
Your dad, countdown to self-destruct, untethers, heads for
that undiscovered country, where, in the future, we gather.
Painting Courtesy of Our Featured Artist Fahed Mohammed Shehab
