“My father has gone to join my mother and their elders just beyond the rim of the seen. And I am asking language to lead me to the bridge, the brink, the edge of what the great poet Lucille Clifton once called the lip of our understanding. Because I understand it is here that the hard work of my generation, the work of living together with others, must take place.

Have I learned anything from that once-ago season? Have I gathered any lesson from the ...