The Dead Return Every Minnesota Winter

The Dead Return Every Minnesota Winter

bird hunting

My father staggers ahead
with a rifle strapped to his shoulder,
the first snow still salted
in drifts of his hair.
Cov noog tau mus tsev lawm,
he says, but we trek further
to places the wildfires have yet to claim.
We passed a nest of robin eggs
crushed beneath a giant silver maple,
he gathers the speckled shells
into his palms, fits them into unnamed
countries, then buries them beneath
the scorched earth.
He speaks a prayer before moving on
deeper into the songless morning.
My hand in his hand, he tells me
he remembers his older brother
only in quiet spaces of the woods,
his eyes closed shut as he walks.
I squeeze his hand afraid
he’ll trip on overgrown roots without knowing
he has traveled these paths many times before
without me. He stills
and whistles, low and long. He waits
and waits. I have often met my uncle
in stories my father recounts,
I conjure what is left of a ghost:
the lightning bolt that scars
across his chest, the smoke
in his breath, the ivory black
feathers of his wings,
and always I imagine,
the soft lilt of his voice curving
up against the thickening wind,
Kuv nyob ntawm no! I’m here, I’m here!

a hundred lives

I visit you the most in the coldest months of the year.
Minnesota daylight cuts into the snow,
and the sun stays frozen on the lake,
and so do you. A blurry mirage
or a ghost, the whispered,
mus zoo os in the ears, and then
I’m walking through the woods
in the middle of March
and I swear I have done this
a hundred lifetimes before
but this time I’m not in Laos,
not in Indiana. I’m seven, or maybe
twenty-three. I remember the burning trees
and salted earth, the first smells of spring
and the return of the robins. I see you. You stop
to turn around and tie the laces
of my boots. You tell me to hold my hands out,
so I do. You slip your leather gloves
over my hands, and carry on
through the years. You tell me
to walk in your footsteps, that it’ll keep
my feet from getting wet. But
you don’t know all the drowning
it takes to keep up. Or maybe
you do. You stuff your hands into your pockets
and carry forward,
and I have no choice
but to stop. Txiv,
I would have loved
to find all the ways to live
a hundred lives
and counting,
but now must stop to greet
the quiet snowfall of the present.
Father, we reached for the same things
in different times
of our lives, look
at how fifty years passes
in a single flame of incense. Dad,
I am your son. I will always
be your son. Look
the snow is beautiful here,
the silver maples all weep without sound,
and the birds have found their way home.