Instead of Death I Welcome the Stranger

Walking his dog along this winter-lit trail

ghosts of our exhalations mingling

in a dialogue of their own. My mother

has just died, I want to confess to him—two breaths

before we signed the papers, collected

the gold rings and necklace she never

took off. Instead of sighs I invite the dog,

who is a river of joy, to flow against my legs,

when only hours ago I gowned up, masked

against infection, to usher my mother

into the unspoken dusk that is

the other side. Night, and candle smoke

casts its signature into invisible

waters where my dead loves keep vigil.

Instead of accepting the erratic language

my heart speaks, I practice rest steps up Paradise

to sixty-eight-hundred-feet elevation, grateful

as Mt. Adams awakes beneath a shroud,

for the traveler who held my hand

across the ice field, as I traverse this new terrain

in sandals, camera in hand, the black

bear crossing my path, the hoary marmot

whistling into the mist.