Three Ships

I saw three ships come sailing in –
snow compacting in time with the song
as I approach the ancestor house.
Chimney–smoke scars the blind sky,
a slow–turning cloud declaiming death -
on Christmas Day on Christmas Day.

Adult tread obliterates my boyhood prints.
Barney, born that summer, tests a high howl – 
follows me three–padded to the river.
Singing their ships, the boys keep out of view –
in a quarter century their voices have not diminished.
The house ticks like a music box, drips with icewater.

Nose against pane, I become a trick of the light,
a displaced mariner from one of the ships
somehow come ashore.
My red racer leans easily under the window,
the white saddle my father held
as he ran alongside, steered then released.

Shirts on the washing line
creak like dry bones.
Robin at the feeder unfurls his heart;
the blood quickens.
Blink away sleep; if you stare long enough
the lash will frost.

Even this far inland, the ships
could be seen from my bedroom window;
melding on the horizon, in and out of the mist.
Breath enough to fill the mast once more,
the three ships sung into existence
on Christmas Day in the morning.

I leave the house, follow my prints to the river,
where the last of the melting snow
betrays the boy’s face under ice,
trapped in a one–way  mirror.
Red–cheeked, stalled as the three ships
brimming in the horizon of his wet eyes.

Published in Page & Spine