Winter touched me as it touches root.

A tree shoots up, then out,

 

then up again. I grew that way

when he died. There were ghosts, 

 

and I stumbled across holes

in the earth large enough to den

 

some animal—I didn’t believe

in things like before. All spring,

 

from the driveway, I waited for

the bus to leave, for a sweatshirt arm

 

to wipe frost off the back-hatched window.

Sometimes Dad said the screaming

 

in the woods was bobcat.

When the algae-slick water rose in our pool,

 

it looked like the hump of a fish

before the surface breaks. It was summer.

 

A night with little moon. Did you—

do you see it? I asked, stepping back,

 

cold as topsoil. Dad bent over the nylon ring,

peered past the cheap pool;

 

I was sure he hadn’t seen the water move,

I was sure the living were the quiet ones.