Ashes

By Susan Mardele

Feel the burn – thighs, calves, feet.
1300 feet up a rocky path
I can imagine you taking
on a journey toward peace.

Hear the wind, restless, moving.
Here helping, there hindering.
Whispering your name.
A silent communion.

Smell butterscotch baking,
Ponderosa Yellowbellies in the sun
offering up heady incense
in the chapel of ancients.

Clutch the jutting black rocks.
Ladder to the wind. Climb.
Reaching for the higher place.
Perspective.

Take in the stark rocks,
the golden grass dry in summer.
The lake, distant, cool and deep.
A sea of treetops.

Cast to the wind
a small part of the hand I held,
the mouth I kissed,
the laugh I heard.

Build a cairn of flat hard rocks.
Leaving something of you
in this high holy place
where I can imagine…you.