the exuberantly rotting nurse logs

all along the trail of the last hike

I took my antsy rescue dogs

on before the season closed.
I left my little girls with their fevers

at their father’s. I packed for what I knew.

I skirt a face-down river, flail as the marionettier

of my pack, dread that I wasn’t born 
a hundred years ago, farther from

the end of the world. I listen for the names

of things. The cold sizzles. Branches, bowed

as if laden with snow, weaken with their own 
growing weight. How do I teach my girls about snow,

which dark isn’t scary, what to do with wishes and love,

that the real fairy tale is when no one needs saving.

I excel at walks on the beach. We are in a woods.
We are in a woods because humans

aren’t working. Human relationships aren’t working.

I needed to be loved by someone who has failed;

that’s not (yet) birds, gales, soil.
I hit dirt with my knees; my dogs look

crazy at me. Cups of earth in my hands,

dirt on my dogs’ tongues. I hold their faces,

kiss them sorry, sorry. I’m so sorry.