Father, Daughter, Uncle

Father, Daughter, Uncle

Laurie Klein

He does not tell her
if it was an elm, oak,
or sycamore; or if
the birds stopped singing.
He does not tell her
if the cop found a note;
or what will become
of the barbed wire, although 
he describes that phone call,
at dawn, five days before
Christmas, miles of black ice,
the Pontiac fishtailing all the way
to the next county. He confides
he helped release the body,
into the spattered snow.

All her life, he has told her Secrets 
lead to lies. Now he says
Mom and Nana must never know
how it was done. Do you understand?
It would kill them. And the child, 
at her father’s behest, agrees
to conceal this rot-blossom shame
within their family tree. Call it loyalty,
he says. A final kindness.

No more. 

Say instead, how insidious, how lonely
and taxing, that long compliance, 
holding back the unthinkable,
each small evasion, erosive. The girl
is haunted by trees. Ring by ring, 
a sycamore’s aging trunk deletes
its own childhood—self-hollowing—while
bark keeps peeling back,
back to the hues of youth. O heart,
rest now. Hear the whippoorwill cry, Uncle.

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Laurie Klein
Poet & Author

Laurie Klein is the author of two full-length poetry books, Where The Sky Opens (2015) and her forthcoming collection House of 49 Doors—both from the Poiema Poetry Series and Cascade Books.

 Photography by Joel & Jasmin Forestbird