“I killed my son,” he said, fielding the catch in his voice,
words plain, unwreathed with plea or pardon.
“They say it was an accident, but I swerved the sled
that hit the tree that slammed the skull
that bruised his brain and knocked the life
right out of him. I heard it slip away. Twice.
I couldn’t get a handle on something so fluttery,
went right past me real slow, but too quick
just the same. Air, they told me, is what it was,
escapes from the lungs when the brain is only matter.

“Ten years old, curled up, a question mark on an envelope of snow.
Death arrived and I, to him no more than a mitten or a cap,
barely breathed as any creature does when danger seems close,
a lunge or swipe away. He stood, his face beneath a mask,
or so I thought, although I’d seen neither.

“And then one night he came again, I knew, for me.
Hours I waited in horror, to see what look he had
or what he buried. The hardest work I’ve ever done,
to will my eyelids up, to see--not night, not death,
but light and love and morning.”