Part of my voice died
with you, halting
abruptly as the Aspen
at timberline, where
even now the snow
dissolves the jagged backs
of the talus.
I will never see
your brooding eyes
again,
never hear
your strange timbre
when I scoop water
from a brook with
a tin canteen
under the din
of hummingbirds;
you’ve become
this enjambment
of memories, mountains,
your past lovers strung
like the blue columbine
and monkshood
along the edge of a ridge, some
doubling back in an arc
as lovers are wont
to do.
We ate raw rhubarb
on Bristolhead, panned
for pyrite at Gunnison,
collected quartz
and petrified wood
on the scabby peaks,
though I was too young
to know your Bhudda nature,
to know that you didn’t
favor my brother
but rather pitied him;
and even though
I did not understand your
cocked eyebrow meant
skepticism, I could
feel the anguish
behind your brown
eyes, a gaze that
contained every ghost
from the house
we fled.
We burned in that house,
all of us,
and I mourned
you even then;
you carried
the scars as well
as any refugee, until
finally the flames
consumed your
corporeal body.
Your ashes
sit by a statue
of Alexander the Great
and a folded American flag
on my window ledge
waiting to be released
on Mt. Holy Cross,
into the Great Divide.
jaznoblog 