from This I'd Know of Birds



When we dredge the lake we turn over one of the beds the back room, haul the frame down to the shore, put it up in the air, and head into the water. We tie it to the back of the boat and heave the dock up onto shore and troll, with the frame pulling everything out of the water. When we turn the frame up on a side, we pull out the cattails, lily pads, clams. We let the sun bake off the rest before someone has to sleep.


*

Today the orange sun waits in setting, smolders a hole above the black wall of pine across the lake, where this sky has filled and emptied of the same orange. The last light like dragonfly wings picks up prisms in the humid air. It might wait for the loons to finish, for us, or the last circle the beaver makes slapping around the island. We've filled today, tired now from the taking of another giant red oak—split, sectioned, and now stacked, a new woodpile and a new seed between two of the old monsters. We all think they will have their dead days too, and we will catch them before they fall and cave our roof in splinters.


*

No curtains rise and fall like someone's sleep. The sink is a sink without water. We pull over the rocks. Each appliance keeps its own small sheet for flame. Bedsprings don't give as you move through—they snag. The storm windows have thickened at the bottom, and the antenna pushes into the cork for better reception. Nails dropped an inch, two, from the ceiling hold a willow branch in place instead of the old pole.


*

Always the decision, when I lead myself over for pitching horseshoes: end over end, or the wobble. My arc out into the tangible dark, the last note under the night breeze wag of branches and dry crumble uncovering shadowless, turned earth. I am seamless throwing and cool night across steel. Steel makes the greatest of whistles—almost a hum, like the gathering of branches together under a canopy, where I pace and walk featureless, just aim.


*

I couldn't compose from the dry forest floor, in the absence of lower branches, lichens, and dog-eared bark below, stretching up to green tree peak.


*

Auspices, haunches, I sit on the island, and from here, it does not look like an island at all. It looks like a wall of trees. I cut a tree often, into many straight parts. I clean the fish, removing even tiny bones. I cut the middle, so the poisons stay out. In the canoe I carry the propane tanks that I needle, and water does not haul itself up the hill. There are four kettles. I will eat from a can. If I press everything close to me, my clothes, the walls, the table, run out into the forest—absolutely everything hears me. Some people will tell you that each leaf nods, birch winks—a rock encircling the fire once did snap from heat.












Thomas Cook says, "My father trained Jake, his retriever, to walk eight inches from his left boot, so he could pull the gun up on his right. Then he could make a quick step back. My birthday was Jake's birthday. I remember I walked behind Jake, a good way back, and I carried the bag of birds."






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