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.