It hardly matters where we begin
for we all settle at last upon the bodies of strangers,
the soil finds its way to the river
and the dark formless bed of the ocean arises, reincarnate, 
across the sunburnt Mojave horizon.
I am once again in a shape-shifted land,
digging in the dirt of ancestors not my own,
disturbing their graves with my teaspoon
and my olive branch.