They say that the Voyagers
will outlast us for billions of years.

Before then, I whisper into
the neighborhood acacia
that my son learned to walk
in a house we don't own
and in one of the lots around here
we secretly buried our hedgehog
after he died of old age.

We too will have no place
to rest our bodies
but maybe this quiet being
can keep something of me
a touch or a breath
as a whorl
in its massive girth

to say that we were here
even when we're long gone
even when only two pieces
of metal in space
are all that's left.