Sonnet for Hunting Land
I started in the northern woods,
a child ankle-deep in a winding creek. Sunlight.
My brothers hid in the trees with their guns.
Uphill, my mother was a window
in a high tower, and being a ghost
of a girl, I drifted through her each night.
This is the story I have told for years—
of hunting land, I remember basil
and water snakes, but there is another.
There is a game we would sometimes play—there
is a blood trail I follow. Circling
a pond on all fours. I am listening
for an absence, learning what a deer learns
when it hears the birds go silent.
