Will you remember

how we drove down the street after bedtime
just to see how the Christmas lights looked
over the ignited portico of our house;

how we made so many promises
like the promise to move to the country,
(the one we kept).

How you wanted horses and chickens
in the country house,

but the move cost us so much
and the remodel,
fixing the family car
and propane in the winter—

that the fence would have to wait
and the barn
and invariably the horses and chickens.

How you forgave us all of the above
everytime we turned pirouettes in the kitchen
and used different voices
to read Robert Frost on the occasion of each snowfall
and Shakespeare in English accents
under the balcony of your painted rooms
during those early childhood years.

How you gave us so much more than we could ever give you
(but hope it didn’t feel that way)
even when it was hard
to keep each other close.

That much like sonnet and free verse,
being the parent
and being the child
are two different kinds of poetry.

Do you reach through the stars
just to touch their hair;
feel the pillow’s sunken scars
where their heads have laid there?

Graze the tips of their noses
with your soft outline of transparent,
the spot each generation discloses
not one shape too far errant?

Do you love the centuries of breathing
in each matchless breath they take;
their faces a nebulous wreathing
of hundreds of years yet to make?

Are there a thousand angels, your ancestors
gently pulling you back to their sphere;
guarding you, our  sacred investors
and making sure we will always be here?

For years I have watched my father move like a river
smoothing over rocks
and making round the sharp edges;
flowing through twists and turns
gracefully as a measure of time.

He is deeper in places
where most can’t meet or distinguish–
a floor that’s hard to touch or see
but must be a pleasant place to drown.

For years the river has swelled with rain
and maintained depth through the drought;

for years, the winter river has never been frozen altogether—
its lower layers never subdued to stillness when the cold comes,
yet stirring still.

But this river in particular—
this long, deep river with unmeasured depth and countless vortexes
and variations and bends,
has been hard to watch.

The winters come colder now
and the water fights to advance underneath the layers of ice.

A winter unkind is the death of a moving river—
sometimes predicted by time,
other times discordant and unexpectedly fast.

But all the time,
everytime—
(I must remind myself that this is the thing about fathers):
the river is the last province to freeze when winter makes it gain,
and always the first one thaw,
with the triumph of spring.

On the fence posts and shingles primed,
on the spinning, chiming pointed tips of icicles.

There they are clinging to her apron–
she’s gone outside to fetch more wood as the fire awaits its own crackle and hiss:

these are the frozen stars of white reposed.

She is baking and humming when we leave the kitchen
and high-step our legs to sift through the snow–

the call from school coming hours ago.

Until that fine red line begins to form on our shins where the boots rub
(certainly you know that line of which I speak),

we will float through the feathery, sallow sand
with the neighbor-boy who hiked a mile up the hill with his eyelashes stuck together
and his face chapped and numb with happy cold.

Spirits of the dead fly and sink repeatedly
when we build the jump and tunnel for our sleds,
adrenalin and joy stronger than hunger.

But our lunch deferred awaits us in the kitchen,
warmed by things we will begin to understand only later;

hot chocolate and tomato soup,
grilled cheese thawing our cheeks.

Then banana bread of course,
before we send the neighbor-boy back down the hill
where a pair of barn owls will split the air silently above his head
as he makes his way home by the light of the moon.

Sometimes we wandered for miles

during that time of year

when the grizzlies sauntered from hibernation

sleepily impatient with hunger

and too close to where we collected things;

their fetid slyness heavy and unseen behind the waking evergreens of spring.

Once, I dropped an armful of dead branches

upon hearing the winter-induced intoxication of

the Mountain Queen herself.

She shuffled and heaved the unsteadiness of her trunk forward

as an eager cub followed inoffensively in her footprints.

My brother and I left our bodies behind

we ran so hard.

And then other times,

the woods were silent for years

when the deer were mostly gone and quietly spaced.

Even the elegance of an irregular buck tiptoeing on snow-dampened leaves

did nothing to disturb the stillness.

We were often found crouched by the rotten wood of the old corral

investigating petrified prints of worms and pocket-sized shells

when our sister came to find us.

My sister was always beautiful when she came to find us;

the flush of her cheeks and the tangled urgency in the red weaves of her hair

brought human life into the world we were meant to belong.

There is a picture I have

of she and I during hunting season

slinking through sage on our bellies

breathing in the cold November air

and exhaling smoke-like circles that span the distance between us.

Her gloves have the tops cut off

and the tips of her fingers show purple already

even though we have just begun.

Behind us,

the wind is carrying in a mass of snow-filled clouds;

the first flurries dainty and transient on the signal-orange of our jackets.

We begin to scale the callous, lifeless rocks

that cover the hummocks between hunter and hunted;

cresting to see the huffing herd upwind and unaware of our presence.

My nervousness is obvious, I know.

She watches me from under the tugged edge of her knit cap.

Breathe,                                                                                                                                

she reminds me.

You’ve got time,                                                                                                                                            

she reminds me                                                                                                                                               

placing her stiffened fingers on my back.

Take your time.

I watch the elk lift their noses to the incoming storm—

their regality unmatched

and my desire to watch them living

stronger than my desire to be close to one in death.

I can’t   with a whisper

loud enough to startle them all                                                                                                  

and start their domino flee

away from my mother and me.

I just can’t.

Aren’t they beautiful                                                                                                                                                        

she asks, watching them go                                      

and turning the safety on.