My smallest son is running out of range
of my voice. Soon he will not hear when I call.

I know that sound travels in waves and in this forest
there are many trees that break my volume

into fragments. I also know that trees have
their own way of speaking with each other—

each root thrusts its message into the periphery
as a signal to other roots. The rhizomatic

tendrils of fungus saying something and
something. The importance of these messages

and their cleaving into each other, not
unlike the way my son’s leaving cleaves

its own message into me. His body has
parted beyond this partition of my voice

into whatever is beyond forest. Perhaps
beyond the meadow and the curling grip

of the grasses in the earth. I understand
how strange we are in this late world

with everything urging us past our sight lines—
how the forest loosens the sound of cars

from the adjacent highway. I keep searching
for a way in, and the bramble near the blacktop

urges me into the clearing and to a joyful son
whose powers are ghostly reasons for the moment.