Pepper spray holstered to my waist, I watched

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.