We sang the twenty hours straight through 

to Montana, that bluejay four-door packed 

so full that fourth summer the trunk sometimes popped 

open, our hiking gear and tents and husbands 

 

and fear of bears and emergency rations of beef 

jerky pressed against the car doors, everything touching, 

inescapable. One morning we climbed a mountain 

to a glacial lake, our sweat sun-baked onto our skin 

 

in the July fever. We climbed and climbed 

and climbed. I shouted for bears. You sang for the stars 

we couldn’t see in sunshine. Our husbands joined 

in as we all staked our claim to adventure.

 

At the mountain’s edge, you and I stripped 

down: tits to the sky, all of Montana stretched 

before us, and we laughed and laughed and laughed. 

Your husband took our photo from behind, arms linked, 

 

breeze on our skin, sisters in the sunshine.

Our ninth summer, we packed into your hospital 

bed, brought lozenges and ginger drops, 

tea that did nothing for your nausea, skin 

 

cream and knitted hats, prayers to a god 

I’m not sure either of us believed in. We summitted 

those last cancer treatments, scrambled up 

a sierra of orange pill bottles. You still sang, even 

 

as I shouted for a cure that wasn’t coming. Our husbands 

joined in, cried with us. Cried and cried and cried.

At death’s edge, with the help of a halo-ed hospice 

nurse and our sisterhood of foxes, we stripped 

you down for a sponge bath, your body nowhere 

 

near Montana’s breath. I passed the washcloth over 

your sweat-slicked skin and we all sang tunelessly.  

You beckoned me close and whispered tits to the sky, 

as you gestured to your open hospital gown, and even then 

 

it was all made of laughter and a reckless insistence 

that the edge wasn’t that close, the drop wasn’t 

that steep, and couldn’t we almost glimpse 

the heavens in the sunlight: our next adventure just ahead.

Isn’t the view really something from up here.