A Time

The problem— it’s not been written yet, the omens: the headless owl, the bobcat struck, the red wolf where she could not be. None of it done and yet it’s over. Nothing yet of night     when she called me closer asked me to bring her crow painting to stay straight across from her feet so she could waken into it, remember her friend. Of Old Chief alongside her shoulder still watching over her just as the mountain had done throughout her Alberta childhood. The Pendleton shroud bearing our braids, her figure in flaming pyre. The cards, the notes, the tasks the things undone,     not done and she with us        faraway as this has always been    and ever will continue. We meet we leave we meld and vaporize from whatever it was that held us human in this life. And all the beautiful things that lead our thoughts and give us reason remain despite the leaving and all I know         is what you know when it is over said and done it was a time and there was never enough of it.