distance (part thirty-five)

I drove up Mad River Road a couple of weeks ago
on a sunny Sunday and thought
the leaves would still be ablaze,

      but they'd all fallen off, and the trees were bare,
      and in the dimming light they looked like mummified bones
          standing end on end on top of one another,
          perhaps as a warning for me to turn back,
      and the
                      sun
      was behind
      the hills,

so I visited the cemetery on the way back instead.
The sun shone rare,
and there was a tree on fire there,
      at the bottom of the hill,
      with wind chimes singing in the biting breeze of a drowsy autumn,
      shading a few gravestones--
          what a place to rest.
          Beauty in death.

I looked for you there, although
everything in its power fought to tell me you wouldn't be there, of course.

You weren't there.

I don't know where you rest,
but if I had to guess,
you were scattered among the mountaintops.
Ideally from the summit of Tyee.

You were never pulled to me.

It was just a thought.

-Dana Winter