From up here on this mountain, I see
hills and lakes stretched out to the far horizon.

The world doesn’t much care about us
and yet, like a parent, it holds us close.

I hike to this place every year
on the day she died. On this rock ledge

under the wide sky, I feel closer to her.
To where she is now. The difference

between feeling and knowing disappears.
Gravity pulls one to another.

The way Rilke saw it,
everything here / seems to need us.

The moon and the earth were separated
long ago and they still hold on.

Just because you can’t feel the tug
of the other skater circling the lake

with a red scarf flying behind her
doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

Even when we’re not together, we are.