The Field

Carried off by boredom from the deer blind Followed older brother's footsteps Through the thick brush in behind him slow Approaching where the forest broke Saw him standing at the tree line Hunter orange distorted in the boughs of pines Between us in the woods Where I stood now in my hand-me-downs in the cold The same ones my uncle wore in that framed page from the press Both of them up north Above Dad's desk A couple years after their father's death And his brother left Stood and watched him scan the open field with his rifle scope About a mile deep Twice as wide at least Where we could see Military netting draped across the canopy of trees Tried to keep up where he walked on There appeared to be some compound On the far side of the clear-cut We knew the rumors of militia grounds in the north Heard on our radios Locals poaching does talk in voices down By the bait piles on the ridge And Father waited patient Eyeing deer sign from his blind By the lake and I On the other side of it Kept on walking through the field To find my brother standing Posed with his gaze locked In the ground down in a pit Scattered with carcasses Skin on their bones dried Skulls sawed for the antlers of the dead Like some portal to nowhere now For forever and no time I watched Trancelike with the vultures overhead Heard his boots in the grass again The fading of footsteps away Knew he was walking off To the compound up ahead And I knew I had to break from the trance Follow fast in that direction Or I'd never find a way to close the gap That if I stared down in the corpses there Transfixed He would go that way forever And I would stay here Staring downward And I did