but had succumbed to the water’s inundation
now perches for water birds and crows
resting from flight or warily watching my alien work
and if not on the river hike high up the hill
overlooking the big bend where the river turns east
to a side hill clearing logged of its fir
where a large rock clings suggesting a place to sit
and look down the valley
almost to the old Diamond Match mill at Cusick
and brood in the style of a 19th century novel
forgetting the trivialities of model airplanes
or my collection of stamps deliberations
I set aside for the pew and the pastor’s sermon
My Father’s War
I
The humming birds came to his feeder
regularly enough that he knew each one
by sight he didn’t name them but recognized
their coloring and habits of interaction
and he looked for them to return each day
to the yellow plastic flowers and the holes
where they poked their little beaks
for a sip of red sugar nectar
and when they didn’t return
and it was clear that they would never return
he would go sit in an old folding chair
under the apricot tree remember
standing near the tower looking east
counting his big silver birds as they returned
noting the numbers on their tall tails
and their peculiar markings
II
I see him mopping up the blood
of an 18-year-old gunner
pooled up against the fuselage ribs
under the wooden floorboards
some of it still frozen in fingered patterns
ice crystals visible on the dark surface
his own blood retreating from his skin
until he is the cabin deep in the woods
doors and windows frozen shut
only a thin curl of smoke in the chimney
and in some interior room sits an old man
hunched over a small stove
warming his cold hands
III
He laid his ear
against the cool skin
of the fuselage
reaching blind
into a handful of wire
cut up
by a 20 mm shell
from a 109
he heard it
like he’d heard it
before
the rumble
of the big
Wright Cyclone engines
the whine
of the 109
piercing the formation
cannons
pounding tracers
leading to the target
a shell parting
the thin aluminum
bursting
in the soft tissue
of the left waist gunner
ripping out
the heart that fueled
his boyish smile
the rattle of bone
flecking
against the metal
near his ear
IV
My father and I climbed the long stairway together
but in his mind we were ascending
a path tangled with vines and giant leaves
all dripping in a sticky stifling mist
heady with the odor of rotting wood
and the calls of strange birds
and as he reached the summit
a familiar smoke appeared putrid
with burnt flesh and punctuated
with the cries of the wounded
I was slightly behind and to his left
climbing the long stairway
into the gallery of Reynolds Store for Men
to sit at Mr. Reynolds’ big oak desk
where I would sign for my wallet-sized
official U.S. government ticket
to manhood
Lady Slipper
Crossing State Hwy 20 that follows
the spring flow of the Pend Oreille
we hike an old logging road
past the rotting log cabin and up the hill
take in the damp May woods
I had often explored
I wanted to show my mother
a lady slipper
I had stumbled upon
the day before blooming
under a stand of young fir
bearing right where the road splits
and walking maybe another 25 yards
we veer off under the gray-green canopy
shift between the trunks
to stand over a single pink flower
framed by a single ovate leaf
persevering in a molding mat of rusty duff
my mother kneels
I kneel beside her
Woodshed
In June we began filling the woodshed
with fir taken from the forest
that surrounded us,
chunked, carried
to the pile outside the shed
where Dad
spent days splitting rounds
with the big double-edged axe
he’d bought in Newport.
This