the last of a family
you lived on honey,
music, snails
crushed underfoot where
the livable world
was a corridor tightening
options closing
without announcement;
an old story of land
redrawn for what could be taken
in the name of progress—
clearings; in the wake
of a promised future,
bodies left behind
survivors, too,
until gone
forest birds arrive as call
before sight, whole
genealogies; ancestors
moving in the breath of leaves
some blows banish not only
the home, but all conditions
for return
now a recording,
still calling