I remember him by becoming
the birds beneath the grain cars in the switchyard
They aren’t connected but they know how to work together.

He'd say the world we see around us is a film shot by ghosts;
Ideas projected onto the silver screens of our bodies,
sometimes out of focus.

By the time I was able to understand what he meant,
I realized I was just glad we weren’t bad actors.
The rest was just too much to know.

But there wasn’t a day that went by I didn’t feel like one of them,
a wraith just off the corner of the screen - out of focus.

I take the children now, to the Union Pacific yard downtown
where we smash pennies on the rails; throw stones at devils. 

It’s alright if you need to stop from time to time
and look around like you have some sort of an idea where we even ARE.