Losing You

As often as I lose things, it is always a slap I don't expect. It is always the first time. All day the snow came down. I wore it in my hair like the men I adored as a child did. It was heaviest in my eyes. When I blinked each time everything was replaced again, even more magical that it was a milla-second before. I was a cloud walking. A woman I barely noticed came up and gave me her number in a coffee shop,"Call me when your done walking,"she cooed. There are checks that we don't cash because we value memory more than money. It was so nice to be seen by a woman. It is easy to feel like the shadow under the table. I slide the check into the part of my billfold where memories sleep.
As the sun fell away the ice replaced the snow. It came down so hard that I was glass and cloth before I could find the woods. Finally as thorns put fingers all over my pack, I was off the road where cars moved like magnets held by childrens hands. I did not know that the thorns lifted my hundred year old knife that I had brass tacked for this walk. In my top pocket I have a square of buffalo leather I was going to make a sheath with when another storm came. It would be thirty miles before I noticed my blade was gone. The night before I knew of my loss, I had a dream. A large bear came again to my tent. This time we fought like snake and crow. I sank my old blade into its neck because it was my beak, but I did not win. We both growled and spat until I rolled over onto snow. Then the bear was gone. In the morning the knife was gone.

Another day is gone along with the spoon I treasured for over twenty years of trails. I pulled out my watercolors and painted it from memory in my journal. If it was not for the fantastic people I will tell you about I would still be hitting snowbanks with my walking sticks, missing my old friends.