Two Portraits of My Father in a Tree

I.  

Step where I step,
he said, quick,
quiet over oak root.
The hushed path rose

to meet him.
By footfall and rifle glint,
rustle of hoof
and pulp of blood,

he led me deep
where the gut-shot buck
had made its briary bed.
Even from the shining

back of his scalp,
I knew his face,
shame-shadowed
at his own poor aim,

at the animal’s pain
grown shadow-long
with the fall of dusk.
Three times we neared

the deer, and each
it heard our ragged breath
and stood and lumbered
beyond sight.

Come swamp’s edge
he turned skyward.
Gun on his back,
he climbed the bur oak.

His eyes hungered
over earth
and found no sign.
I watched from below.

He looked past light,
past knowing.
How the buck
would die: slow

and alone in the mouth
of the woods.
The many ways
it would become.

Scarlet waxing
the moon of a tick.
Blackberry sheen  
of a buzzard’s coat.

   ​​​​​​II.

Heat pearled our skin
as we followed
up the mountain’s face.

His idea, to tie our coats
to the trunks of trees.
The clumsy knots

of their arms
a gift, an embrace.
Sophie so small that

only a sapling would do.
We moved on,
lightened, cooled.

The air thinned
and the land went blue.
How good it felt,

to toil awhile in sun
for the sight
of a rippling valley.

It was Christmas.
Earth was new.
Then dusk.

Then darkness
like a minnow net.
Then us, its catch.

Then the path
swallowed by brush.
Then, again,

the needling cold.
Our arms were bare.
We did not know

he was afraid.
Even as he climbed
the white pine

to search for some
sign of home.
Even as we shivered

on the earth below.
Look how he sways
in the treetop,

we thought.
See how his head
brushes the sky.