And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself that you tasted as many as you could.
― Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum

Dear Lousie Erdrich,
Motherless now,
my grief compels me to harvest the moments of my life
in bushel baskets, and to tell myself
that I’ve tasted as many as I could:

that in those last days, 
when she was already weightless—
her bones gone quicksilver—
I hung on, grounding her with my great love;

that the sweetness of her life
was not wasted on me;

that today as I walk the path around the pond,
I’m greeted by water lilies, which are magnificent
structural things—

not at all shapeless smears of pastel light
floating on a Monet canvas—

but a hundred or more white missiles on green launch pads, 
sprung and ready to release their sweet weight
into first light.

So, here is my reckoning:

that though the years unmake me,
casting long shadows of their dominion,
I can take stock of my windfall:

     of this legion of lilies rising in the morning mist,
     of this redwing blackbird whose cries split the seam of dawn,
     of this mother’s voice, like the still small hum of locust, ever in my ear.

And today I can say, without a doubt,
that my baskets are full, and I’ve not gone without.