the trees with all my skin open on that narrow
brushy trail in Alaska, as we made up
songs that rhymed with bear. The only
bear we saw was black and freshly dead,
lush folds of shining fur, draped over a rope
tied to the back of a four-wheeler. My friend,
we are closer as prey, as warm singing bodies
against the ice and endless snow. When we reached
the open rocky knoll above the glacier’s blue
teeth, we let there be silence after what we told
each other. Each broken thing shone in our open
palms. At home, in the mountains down south,
the silence I thought was one emptiness
has become another. I’m afraid
of how I keep circling the story—
a woman who moved to the north country—
glacier-polished bedrock, ragged peaks, deep forest
where she surprised a sow and her cubs. The bear hit
the end of her charge inches away, her roar reverberating
in belly and bones. When she swiped her giant paw,
it made wind and took skin off one thumb before
the bear huffed and turned away. What I keep circling, though,
is what the woman said after, almost shy of her own
truth— it was like coming home. I don’t need
to tell you this, my far-away friend, our love
lives in that charged air, the emptied
swollen quiet when the bear was gone. The wildness we keep
after, sure it misses us as much as this want of it we carry.
