I was out watering the plants in my front yard a couple months ago, trying to give them a good drink before the heat of a Sacramento August day, when Robert Gordon walked by. He was moving at his usual fast pace, paint-spattered shorts to his knees, flip-flops squishing in the water I’d inadvertently added to the sidewalk.

… the same moment the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you …
~Margaret Atwood, “The Moment”

When the big U-haul rumbles onto our block,
a boxy behemoth with empty car trailer
clattering behind, it hits me:
It takes a lot more to move a body nowadays.

Before my brain could begin
to process it — you, falling to the airport
floor, pulse fluttering in your neck
until someone rolled you onto your back,
and the fluttering stopped —

It was as if you cleaned up before you left
which, considering that you had to clear
out a whole lifetime, you can consider
a miracle