melissaahowells - For My Brother T. J. ( 7/15/2022)

I
pinged you in the Wallowa'S
I
sent the Spirit Bears
on Alaskan shores
I wove myself
through the Buffalo Grass
I dug with claws
through snow

You lost yourself
twenty-three times
I dread the twenty-fourth

the hunter in the sky
pulls back the bow and takes aim
we've both tried our tracking skills
to no avail

you evade
and you go
and you are every where
but never at home
not in your body or your mind

I forever seek
but shall not find you
and there's no memory that might
remind you of the now
and how you and I are linked
to a shared past

when did we last
look into one another
with lapis eyes
mine see and realize
I can't help you
return back up the winding road
where you left the boundaries
of our unfolded map

your face is
carved out of mountains
chiseled to bone
weathered and wasted
I still do my best
to recognize you
( I might know your gait
if I was walking behind you...)

I ask the coyote to cry
your name into
the star filled skies
I ask the winds to whisper words
into your ears as you dream stark dreams

we're one day's journey
in between
I'd have you join me here
to my inner visions of you
though you've been so long gone
from my eyes

the years are a blizzard
the years are a wild river
erasing the shoreline
that now divides in between us

at one time
your face was my pinnacle
my zenith
one out of none to admire
in our brief family

I want you back
tell me, is there some way?

written directly to the page in the middle of the night near
the lip of the ocean as she speaks to me in dreams
and rocks my bed upon her shores

LEGAL COPYRIGHT FOR THIS POEM 3:42AM PST 5/24/2022 AS I , WITH DREAMS, PULLED FROM SLEEP
AND ALSO FOR THIS POET/WRITER/AUTHOR MELISSA A. HOWELLS
AND ALSO FOR THIS LEGALLY COPYRIGHTED AND REGISTERED SITE TITLE
MELOO STRAIGHT FROM HER TILT-A-WORLD.