(for Isabel Stenzel Byrnes)

Sitting on a patio overlooking
saltwater and forest, tiny bits
of fluff float toward me,
decorating my shirt with mini
seed pods bound for someplace
they can’t determine.

They literally go where the wind blows.

I idly wonder—cottonwood?
I don’t see any, the source escaping
me until I focus on the precise
direction all this wind-borne fluff
is coming from,

which is when my eyes land on
a tall plant just behind the thriving
sword fern—not individual globes
of dandelion that decorate lawns,
but long-stemmed starbursts
loosened to fly.

I move closer to watch, as if
keeping a close eye on fledglings
hesitating at the edge of a nest,
some already released into
the world.

But all are not ready to fly just yet,
as I suspect you—who wanted
to wring every breath from
your borrowed, ravaged lungs—
were not,

when a whoosh of wind pulled
you loose, sending you soaring
in a direction you could not choose,
your bits of fluff scattered in a
hundred directions,

landing for a moment on so many
who adored you and always will,
drifting by others, with your final,
loving touch.