I remember wood smoke & whitetail,
bluegill still swimming under a frozen lake
as if searching for a sort of redemption.
All I want to ask you is how to clean a fish
with this dull knife, how to cook and eat
the translucent-pink sheets floating in the bowl.

*

I remember the sun like a bowl, the summer
my father & grandfather cut down pines
in the forest. I imagine them with a crosscut saw,
sweat & muscle, bark & splinter, song of breath
& birds. All I want to ask you is how the other trees
stayed standing when the snow came.

*

Grandmother, I remember the snow,
can imagine the red & white of ambulance
lights. But all I want to ask you is how
to be winter—how to tuck my legs under me,
& pretend they are the fish & I am the lake.