Hitbodedut

When her father

Jumped in the Arkansas River,

My grandmother took a pair of

Scissors through her blackiron hair,

sending it falling to the floor in prayers

Of bitterness because she had been

Told that her Apache ancestors

Sheared away loss and tossed it

away in handfuls to the terminus of desert wind.

I walk today into the woods,

Gasping with famished lungs at the

Thinner air of the Colorado mountains.

I talk to you for a moment on your birthday

the day hovering ghost-like and gargantuan

In the echo of my steps across ice-smoothed

pebbles.

I decide that I will no longer say I miss you,

nor look for you in the hours of silence, content

At last to let your husk be swept away by

The impotent gusts of a late-spring snow.

I pull out a small blade and cut a tuft of hair

(nut-brown and thin, unlike my grandmother’s)

And whisper your name as I toss it into the breeze.

It falls to the ground as snow grows heavy in

evergreen branches. My tears fall ceaselessly

at what the sky refuses to take.