I hiked that place with no map, the path
sometimes elusive but finding me each time I reached
despair. Manzanita marked my legs in scrolls
of blood and scab, filled my socks with burrs
while I exhausted myself on vistas — all that
sky and surprise: an inland lake
doubling everything toward heaven. I found
beside my narrow track some matted grass,
a small circle holding back undergrowth, coarse fur
snagged on twigs. I could almost feel a body’s
warmth: recent creature, though I had no skills
to name it. I thought of you, an absence
in the landscape. And me, tending the loss, keeping it
from growing over.
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