Snow drops from the fanned branches of a pine,

the flowering cones asleep in ice.

A white-tailed deer backs into the shadows.

I remember fields like this:

christened with the tracks of beaver and winter fox,

my father riding ahead on a yellow snowmobile,

slamming through small drifts.

He would point across the landscape,

yelling against the noise of the engine.

None of that is here.

The deer does not move from the nest of trees,

so I walk toward it, to see the thing

my father would not stop for.

I hear how this body stumbles,

tangled among corn stalks and hay.

I am the noise I never wanted to be,

rooted in this field.