Vigilance Go Slowly Poem by Michael C. Peterson

Vigilance go slowly, our ear so hard this
year to the rail. Bantam seed, who
nonetheless explodes from drink, suppose:
the high lake winters over. That
one you've always called cathedral. Season
means your father knows this
even without going. The family winters
over like the sternum of the lake.
Alpine, the mother dies. Ruin is supposed—
But one thing begetting everything—
so?—that would be ruin. So. Law by law
the stalk with which we wail
on us, to each his own, to parts, to pulp,
to filum: to imagine now
the family working through a field of wild-
flowers. Hold on.
To imagine the family in death's field.
What is the law
or what is the culture of that law, whatever
name of the wilderness
before known
to the family before
sorrow, whatever chant by which we begin
to know the bare name barely
again, not opulence but now mineral.
Tuolumne. Your house
that would be granite. Now drink to that.