1
\nAn old Life photograph
\nprints itself on Rebecca\u2019s mind: The German
\nregular army hangs
\npartisans on the Russian front.
\nGrandfather Wehrmacht in his tight-
\ncollared greatcoat adjusts
\nthe boy\u2019s noose as his elderly
\nadjutant watches. Beside the boy,
\nhis girl companion has already
\nstrangled, her gullet cinched when a soldier
\nkicked the box from her feet.
\nIn the photograph, taken
\nnear Minsk, gray sky behind him
\nthe summer of nineteen-forty-one,
\nthe boy smiles\u2014
\nas if he understood that being hanged
\nis no great matter.<\/p>\n
2
\nAt this open winter\u2019s end, in the wrack
\nand melt of April,
\nRebecca walks on the shore by her summer
\nswimming place, by Eagle Pond
\nwhere the ice rots. Over
\nthe pocked glaze, puddles of gray stain
\nspread at mid-day. Every year
\nan ice-fisherman waits one weekend
\ntoo many, and his shack drowns
\namong reeds and rowboats. She counts
\nthe season\u2019s other
\nwaste: mostly the beaver\u2019s work\u2014stout
\ntrees chewed through, stripped
\nof bark, trailing
\ntwigs in the water. Come summer,
\nshe will drag away the trash, and loll on red
\nblossoms of moss.<\/p>\n
3
\nShe walks on the shore today
\nby \u201cSabine,\u201d the beach her young
\naunts made, where they loafed together,
\nhot afternoons of the war. She arranged
\nfreshwater mussels on moss;
\nwatched a mother duck
\nlead her column; studied the quick
\nrepose of minnows; lying on pine needles loosened
\nout of her body. Forty years
\nlater Rebecca walks
\nby the same water: When July\u2019s lilies
\nopen in the cove
\nby the boggy place where bullfrogs
\nbellow, they gather in the sun
\nas they did when she picked a bunch
\nfor her grandfather Ben
\nin his vigorous middle age.<\/p>\n
4
\nIn October she came here last,
\nstrolling by pondside with her daughter,
\nwhose red hair brightened
\nagainst black-green fir.
\nRebecca gazed at her daughter\u2019s pale
\nwater profile, admiring the forehead broad
\nand clear like Ben\u2019s, without guile,
\nand took pleasure in the affection
\nof her silent company. By the shore
\na maple stood upright,
\ncasting red leaves, its trunk gnawed
\nto a three-inch waist
\nof centerwood that bores the branches\u2019
\nweight. Today when she looks for it, it
\nis eaten all the way down; blond splinters
\nshow within the gray
\nsurface of the old chewing.<\/p>\n
5
\nTwo weeks ago she drove her daughter
\nto the Hematology Clinic
\nof the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital
\nand paced three hours
\namong bald young women and skeletal boys
\nuntil a resident spoke
\nthe jargon of reassurance. By the felled
\nmaple Rebecca\u2019s heart
\nsinks like the fisherman\u2019s shack. She sees again
\nher son\u2019s long body twist
\nin the crushed Fiesta: A blue light revolves
\nat three in the morning; white-coated helpers
\nlift him onto a stretcher;
\nthe pulverized windshield glitters
\non black macadam
\nand in the abrasions of his face.<\/p>\n
6
\nIn the smile of the boy hanged
\nnear Minsk, and in the familiar entropy
\nof April at Eagle Pond,
\nshe glimpses ahead a winter
\nof skeleton horses in electric snow.
\nThat April, only the deep burrow-hiders
\nwill emerge who slept
\nbelow breath and nightmare: Blacksnake,
\nfrog, and woodchuck
\ntake up their customs among milkweed
\nthat rises through bones
\nof combines. That summer, when blackberries
\ntwist from the cinders
\nof white houses, the bear
\nwill pick at the unripe fruit
\nas he wastes and grows thin, fur
\ndropping off in patches from his gray skin.<\/p>\n
7
\nToday, at the pond\u2019s edge, old
\nlife warms from the suspense of winter.
\nPickerel hover under the pitted, corrupt
\nsurface of April ice
\nthat erodes at the muddy shoreline
\nwhere peepers will sing
\nand snapping turtles bury their eggs.
\nShe sways in the moment\u2019s trembling
\nskin and surge: She desires only
\nrepose, wishing to rise
\nas the fire wishes or to sink
\nwith the wish and nature of stones.
\nShe wants her soul to loosen
\nfrom its body, to lift into sky
\nas a bird or withdraw as a fish into water
\nor into water itself
\nor into weeds that waver in water.<\/p>\n
– Donald Hall<\/em><\/p>\n\n 1 An old Life photograph prints itself on Rebecca\u2019s mind: The German regular army hangs partisans on the Russian front. Grandfather Wehrmacht in his tight- collared greatcoat adjusts the boy\u2019s noose as his elderly adjutant watches. Beside the boy, his girl companion has already strangled, her gullet cinched when a soldier kicked the box from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2341,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7280"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2341"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7280"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7282,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7280\/revisions\/7282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}