With the double barrel breached
_____amid the honeysuckle,
___his trigger finger cracks
___another beer. The fields,
_____beyond our hidey-hole
in the woodbine, sink, this dawn,
_____in biting light. Mute,
mostly, my father speaks—
___position your arms to waltz
___the gun is the girl and lay
your cheek to her— by God,
_____I listen. His fiddle clenched
_____in the bend of his neck creaks
like a stair-step, the can
___between his thighs rucks
as he scuffs the horsehair
___across a rosin cake.
_____At the ready, he holds
___his fiddle like I do the gun.
_____The strings tug from the gut
an organ-bellowed honk
and snow geese, they come,
_____yoked to it. Lead the sight
___ ahead the goose. At the up-
___beat of its wings, shoot.
His wrist flicks and shuffles
_____the call again and then
___my flash of birdshot routs
_____the gaggle overhead
of two—mother-of-pearl
___and lung blood in the black
veneer of a cotton field,
_____inlaid herringboned.