Cracked Places

A week before she died
She gave me this book
With love
And the promise of time.
So it sat with unborn characters
Waiting with her other gifts

It occurs to me now
as I follow her
(Pouring myself through breaks in the landscape
Sliding down angular phrases)
The soul who loved this book;
A lover; a searcher
of the undergrowth

Hiking where mountains and sky
fold (the cup of a hand) across my eye.
She loved these cracked places-
My face