I sense life’s precarious balance    hushed
Stilled    moving to the negative
Our aging rusty colored companion
Lying camouflaged on his brown tattered rug snug
In front of the warmth of the fireplace
Appears uncommonly restless
The living room Kmart clock    a
Plastic cheapness hanging between two white candles
Gives a strike    a moment today or tomorrow

It is bloodless white mid-morning the dog with a start
Throws head back making tags ring letting loose a feeble howl
Our bodies give a quick convulsive ****.
Innate fear acknowledges.
Coming distant its portentous screams shatters    sneaks
Into being     matter of factly taking sway of our simple lives
We sit in coated silence awaiting the
Arrival.

Defeated we stand
Early frost beneath the skeletal body of the silver maple
Grey shapes emanate from the silent visitor
Take form holding her brown corduroys and red sweater

Mom is pushed by unseen hand to her kness
Head bowed no sound
Her only movement hysteria of shoulders.
The tree bark softens allowing dad’s right hand
His face bathed in earthly blood
Gazes upward      my eyes follow up through the maple
Autumn bared     the stars shine beyond the naked limbs.

“Mr. Lawson, we found this underwear along with the clothes in the trunk of a parked car out on Bell Road close to the pond. We’re going to get some more men out there to drag it.”

The underwear was stained with blood.

The family huddles around the fire in the sanctuary of home
As the nets sieve the frigid waters of the silent pond.

Darby jumps up onto dad’s lap
His hand unknowing strokes the
Reddish fur    his eyes as the dogs
Shut to offerings given
Mom sits in the kitchen on the
Edge of a wicker back chair
Taken from grandma’s house
She is holding sister’s white tennis
Shoes against her chest
Rocking back forth back forth
I stand with my left arm crooked
Around the back of her neck
Remembering we once went fishing
At the pond on Bell Road
The hand strokes her heavy black hair

Out the window first light
Shows the tree line of the ridge
The net is empty

Mom is done
She get’s up to brew more coffee
While dad and I go outside to sit on the grey flaking
Front porch and confront the passive morning
Absently I read the comics
Dad lights up a Lucky Strike
The smoke issuing from the mouth
And nose coalesces with that rising from the water
Laden grass     he looks at me
I put down the paper   helpless in the
Company of his pain
Flipping the **** onto the newly graveled driveway
He stands   releasing me
It is still
We listen silently to the lone ringing
From the bell tower of Corinth Church
Up on the hill beckoning the people to
Worship the Methodist brand of God.

Somehow I knew
Dad walks   then runs   toward an old woman
Coming from around the corner from
Behind the woods   she is stumbling
Along the roadside as if drunk or lost
The old woman begins to turn away but – doesn’t
Dad picks her up cradling her as an infant
He slowly walks toward the house
The silence of the bell a muted scream

She is covered in an old grey granny dress
Imprinted with small purple and yellow flowers
Her bare feet are bleeding

After the others had their fun
One of the six
A middle aged man
Had taken her to a dilapidated barn
With **** skins spread eagle on the walls
While moving the sharp edge of a fish cleaning
Knife up down up down between her labial lips
He offered “Cry and holler all you want! You have no home to go back to.
We burned it! Burned it straight to the ground with your precious
Family inside.”

After his play the man took her to
His grandmother’s house up on Ridgeview Road
Just a couple of miles from ours
The old woman looked upon her nakedness and
With the dress   blessed her.
From the vacuous room a whispered
“Jesus Forgive Us “was heard.