The Return
by Caroline Schopp

My Father reloads shotgun shells
in the workshop alone.
He will scout the ridge alone
listening to birds
calling out in the night
And you are sleeping with me.

(go alone

My Father floats the river,
sets his rig in the dawn.
The muskrat slips
between the water's flow

But making love is not like this.

This is his trade, his craft
whittling in the back yard by the red oak
and the forest, pausing to listen
as evening covers him and an owl hoots out
echoes

At dusk and at dawn

The cornfields stretch
before him and he will go into them
laden and he will go
when they are harvested,
he will go there again, he will go
there again and wait, again,
or he will go there alone,

there, the fallen untaken kernels
and now the day begins
the roosting geese have flushed
and arc to him

He reloads shotgun shells in the workshop
it smells of hot lead for weights
and of cork, turpentine pine.

(pass not with me through these skies

You understand: he returns and collects them
returns and returns knowing
his way and keeping the land
listening to birds calling out in the night.

He finds an arrowhead, lost lures
and a little girl's bracelet snagged
on a paper birch fallen
out over water

(for you will be shot down and broken

And what of the cripples, staggering
with wounded wings?

He returns and returns, this is possession:
to lay oneself out in it all awake
at dawn and at dusk, in darkness
alone

while you dream)

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