Too heavy to pick up, impossible to carry.
It weighs down the chest of drawers upstairs.

My hands hold each other still
while you’re a whirling sky, a night of rustling

leaves, starless as the chosen mountain that waits,
another November leaving.

I can’t begin the climb to break the seal and pour
out your cloud of gray dust

over the impatient stream, that endless curve
of bedrock bones.