When I learned that I had died

I had been missing for years.
That was my plan discovered so late in life.
My children were children at the time.
Indifferent in that modern way.

And then I felt the cold floating
Over things that had belonged to me.
Things that looked so different from above
That they were hard to recognize.

The clay tile roof that I had only seen from the ground
The top of my blue Toyota on a cracked strip of driveway.
The lush mango tree, its trunk hidden forever.
The lighted swimming pool next door.

Only the dead see things from this odd angle
And it takes a moment (are there moments here?)
To sort out what it means. The dog seems to know
And watches curiously me as I hover.

My children will be shaken from their indifference.
They might even scream, though I don’t know what I can hear.
I want just a minute more to explain my absence
But as was in my life, I don’t seem capable of sound.