Vitae

Clearing the Farmhouse Attic for My Siblings 

Lost stories stir up with the dust, 
accented in Swedish: the voyage 
and train rides bringing Grandmother west; 
another linking Grandpa Lee’s drowning 
to a card shark and a debt. 
Down narrow stairs we maneuver old trunks 
and frames, a wooden ‘twenties photo viewer. 
Gauzy pieces of childhood 
hover like last night’s drifting dreams, 
only an impression they were there 
            like my long, clear memory of the field pond— 
            where I believed I’d waded—turning cloudy 
            when Father said it vanished during dry years 
before I was born. He’d mourned it out loud so long,
pointing out that low place in fields, 
we all wanted it back. 

Is it what we remember or forget 
that defines us most, or all we imagine in between?
We wager our days for what seems livelihood 
and come to learn the forms of drought. 
My father tried to teach us 
            Know what you can afford to lose 
            and risk less. 
What we presume to discard 
hangs over us like reproach. 

With hollyhocks that went missing over decades 
outside the lichened picket fence, 
what’s real keeps shifting: 
            how two brothers wrecked a milk cart; 
            which Navy uncle gave us nickels for music 
            at the lodge where Snake River ran, 
            its blackness at night a current 
            I’m sure I know: 
my father swept downstream, his bay horse 
finally swimming him to shore 
as he clung exhausted to the saddle— 
            all before he had us, but I can feel the gasping 
            against high rapids, smell the fear the horse could smell.
            All horses are good swimmers 
            my father told me to remember. 

Outdoors, the landscape is clear, 
buoyant; no need to choose what to keep. 
Morning’s shadow of the hillside 
scrolls up its slopes like the lifting of a weight.