The body I carry myself in is broken somehow. Staved in at the shoulder. I stamp to free myself of it, this body, this shell, this broken weight. It falls away easy, so easy.

Free of it, I take myself to the fountain to bathe. I cannot bring myself to look on her, to lift my eyes to her light and presence. I make a slant approach, standing in the drip and fall of the water of light, knowing her with all my porous surfaces. Glad that there is more than one door.

Now, will I sit with her or will I run?

Bear comes. I lean into him, swing myself up onto his back, leaning long and low along his spine and shoulders, the bristle and the brown. Bear runs. He carries me over the ridge and down, moving west, out of this privacy toward others, I think. New territory. I lean and hold.

When we come to the river he steps into it. We move a while with the cold clear currents of snowmelt over stone. I could sleep in that. I could forget myself. 

Around a bend, Bear steps out of the flow onto a beaching bank on the far side, and up away from the river course he slips into the confines of a small box canyon. Small in floor but high high walled. He stops there. I climb down, pacing the small green confines, bumping up against wall against wall against wall. What are we to do here? What am I to do? looking up the grey walls to the burn of blue above. 

Pacing, I am looking for the evidence of others come before me, something fallen, something left, the ring and char of fire. I find nothing. What am I to do here? The brush catches at my feet, my knees. I cannot stay. I must climb. Hands and feet to the knobs and hollows of the stone, the grey, the sharp, climbing.

Above I find a platter of stone, smooth and flat, an offering bowl. I lay myself down on it. Moonlight spills over me. I spill out from the firm edges, sinew and bone, out in a swirl of hair and limb and further too, a sort of silting, grains of light, dusting away, this dissolution, this forgiveness.

OOO