the blueshift journal

Our emotions furrow
only so deep.

Some see iced-over bucket water.
Some see lots gone fallow. Or the white

skim of frost on the basement’s
one window, birch branches cracked

under the smallest bird’s weight.
I see bodies falling—

fallen drunk in deep snow, bad water
from the well, stroke by a fence post, melanoma

unnoticed, plunge from a bridge wire,
skid through a guard rail, bled to death, bled

to death, cardiac arrest.
There is no place for fathers.

From this orphan train, we’re lucky to be
taken in. Our emotions

furrow only so deep. From these shallows,
we have done what we could.