Seeing My Son

Splitting wood on the snowy slope that drops
behind my house, I take a breather from
a knotty slab of hickory and look out
over the frozen lake. Goalie, I call,
the wind taking my voice and raising spindrifts.
Goalie! Again, louder. Dropping the maul
and starting down to get beyond the trees,
I suddenly see him, a dot on the disc of snow,
the blankness stretching from the bristling
side of the mountain — little lake,
but like the tundra now. Black-hooded Goalie,
little moonface, fat and padded, the dog
bounding before him like a loose basketball,
almost out of bounds — both so small,
I think they must disappear. Four years old,
so bleak, so brave, so far away
and in focus, absolutely silent, falling —
lying still just once, too long — up again,
circling back, the dog making larger circles
around him. All that space for running! It makes
the emptiness look fun. I should call him back,
but then? I have work to do before the storm.
            Later, beside the stove, the dog stretched out
at our feet, the house so full of noise and warmth
that an icy peace will seem to grow, elsewhere,
I will read to him and his little brother —
eyebrows, eyelids, close as a Holbein portrait —
"This Is the House That Jack Built," which they know
by heart. I don't see into that. I don't
see anything but snow. Goalie. Goalie.


Published in Yankee, Feb. 1987