The cold of your breath doesn’t disturb me
as I lie here all night
while your perfume passes through—
incarnated to rock, sand and tide.

I sing the song that used to fill you
with bliss, wrap you in white linen
and carry you until you turn to frost
set down gently

between the flimsy craft’s gunnels.
Now your flaming sails billow toward Valhalla.
Your face has lost its deep grooves,
smooth as tallow cooled by water. 

You are the ancestor of future generations.
I see my grandmother in your bones
the same length and curve as mine.
You are my Freyja—Norse goddess 

of love, beauty, fertility and death.
How close we have become at your dying.