...the cold chill of the forest came over me like a shroud...
I knew it the instant I pulled the trigger.
Bad miss. Real bad.
I had swept the gun barrel to my right following, nearly catching up to,
the almost invisible bounding shadow of rabbit.
But I'd seen the boy out of the corner of my eye.
Way off.
Out of place.
Ten steps too far up.
I had warned him to slow down. To hold back
And I fired anyway. Twice.
Maybe it was the second shot that ricocheted off the granite swale of the slope
buried under a couple feet of powder.
Some way. Somehow, the bullet skipped off the rock and Billy dropped like a
wet dish rag with a hole in his eye.
...and the cold chill of the forest came over me like a shroud...
I could not move when I got over him.
I stared at the red blathery hole where his left eye had been.
I fell straight down on my butt in the snow and I did not move from that seat.
Snow falling like play missiles fired by delicate children.
Billy. Inert. Soft crystalline white coldness piling a thousand kisses upon his face.
When the snow on my arms and legs was an inch deep and I began to shiver, I moved.
I picked up the kid and his rifle and added his to mine thrown over my back crosswise.
Then I hefted him over my free shoulder. Like that I marched the 3-4 miles to the car.
Over an hour of trudging. Fearful. Depressed. I put myself on automatic pilot. I
would do jail. Give up a hand. Die for this. Any of that would be fair. My life was over
in every spiritual sense.
One hour with a dead kid on your shoulder makes you think. Killing is sloppy. Not
the mess. certainly not the frozen corpse I carried. But the people. The wrecked lives.
No one should kill. Never. Not nothing for no reason.
No more for me. Billy was gonna be a cool dad some day. Good honest husband.
community pillar. A good example for kids growing up. The growing up he never
would get.
All traded in for a bad shot at a white rabbit.
In your head you have a screen play for your own life. It does not include travesty.
Nor simple convenience. Your story is not about ease. And so, inconveniences you
shrug off. OK. You add the common values of the herd just because they are so
commonly expected. But not in this script are you ever unfolded as one who
demands—that is, is desirous of—matter, in whatever form it may take.
You include love.
You insist on love: yet you killed a kid.
You could have buried the boy in the snow for all the difference it makes. For the
wolves to uncover, and the bears, the raptors, and the field mice and the summer flies
with their bacterial load of carpet cleaners (his own even eating him from within: they
too would need to feed), and the worms, until the rhizome under our feet building the
underground up and up over us all.
But you did not hide the body nor return it to the soil from which all land life
ultimately springs—you carried the stiffening boy to the car. You placed him tenderly in
the back seat and covered him decorously at least with the gesture of the old army
blanket which you had kept in the trunk all these years for no other evident reason that
we can think of now...and you drove to his mother. And this angel woman, this beloved
angel mother
to all the displaced angels rose up and crossed the living room to smite you with open
palm across your cheek for your dereliction of duty and not yet proven negligence. And
she could only scream, "No!"
And without tears stare at you trembling until someone
—her teen-age daughter, you believe—
touched her.
And she fell to the floor silently
conscious
as if struck herself
by a bullet to the head.
The strength left
your knees and
you slumped
beside
her.
Neither she, nor you, nor the boy's sixteen year-old sister would ever comprehend what
is wanted to be known here: Angel Mother kneeling arms outstretched palms down
over the stupid banality of this bad thing,
as if in belated effort to catch escaping soul.
Press it back. She trembling silent. loss. Unto this evil gift you had brought them.
She looks up, above us all, for no reason, wondering, she is wondering...
where light goes?
We know how fast...but how far?
And why had you? Re-played a dozen times on the long hike back. Still, you had to
wonder at the decisiveness of it all...as a brace of dead rabbits slides out from your fallen
pouch upon the oval braided colonial rug on Angel Mother's living room floor.
A boy for three rabbits.
For a stew: a child.

July in Northern California
the wine in potential grows fat and happy
on virile green vines, marching like vast armies
camped in valleys and advancing in countless
columns over the straw-colored hills. We are
in the midst of the drought months when growth
is only granted by moisture stored safely away
underground. No help will come from above.

This rhythm of nature means nothing
to the postman who walks to a different purpose
delivering his tiding six days out of seven
whatever comes from below or above.
And as he approaches
some archaic mind is stirred
as if trying to awaken from a slumber of ages,
from a time of caves and rude huts
when a message wrapped in animal skin or parchment
brought by the hand of a messenger
meant something extraordinary had happened.
Now, the missives are bills or ads and there is no reason
for the genetic arousal of great expectation.

But surprise, like a wildflower, still finds delight through hairline cracks
in the settled concrete of routine life.
The mail came the other day and my wife,
followed the well-worn habit and brought it inside.
Like dealing out cards to no one she shuffled through the small pile.
That day something meaningful dropped out. An invitation
long expected from our son and his bride to their wedding
half way round the world. We noted the foreign writing
of the return address and the interesting little stamp.
My wife opened the envelope and pulled out the card
sweetly graced in delicate hearts white on white.
She opened it, I couldn't see from where I was sitting,
and after a pause began to read lines from a love poem
written in English. Do you know who wrote that she asked?
The words sounded vaguely familiar, I must've read them somewhere before.
She turned the card to show me the poet's name. It was my name.
I had written those words some years ago and lost them in the brush of time.

It's July in Northern California, midway through the fiercely sunny months
of drought. But in my breast a rolling cloud swells up
and slows me in colling shade before it bursts into a downpour
too rich for words.