Sweet Box

Gadwall, pintail, wood duck—ecstatic swimmers

in the cold current. The retriever’s mouth

is suited to such prizes; its temperament,

to mark and tremble on command; its coat,

to shed river; its movements, unlimbered

and effortless as the current past its

banks. Once two hundred soldiers crouched

here above the torrent, hidden in ditches

and redoubts, this bluff a blanket folded

above the flood. Sweet box flanks these fragile

earthworks, an arching scaffold of honey-

musk. I climb the slope into its scent, lose

sight of the dog, come up on the old fort

again, rinsed by river and rain, rain

and river. On the face of it, the past

is a blank. Nine ounces, eleven inches,

nineteen weeks gestation—she will die

in my arms, laboring to breathe. But first

there is sweet box, winter’s balm, improbable,

flowering at the doctor’s door. I wait

where the plant makes scent, as in December

half-light a Swede savors rose-scented broth,

or a florist, under ballasts of light,

resists the subtle stink of baby’s breath,

dreams impossible blue roses, uncrated,

stripped of thorns. I wait, just shy of the door,

its pneumatic sigh and polished glass. Freighted.

Fetus-on-board. Baby-in-tow. Eating-

for-two. Human-in-utero. Which genes

make fragrance, and at what cost? Which make

my body fail its course, weary in its cramp,

its bloody loss, all that tepid February?

Pouch empty this trip, the hunter drains his

thermos, nurses a sputtering outboard

to shore, retriever quiet in the hull.

Is this the most miserable of the hunter’s

pursuits? To troll the winter river, gun cocked,

alert for the sudden snap of muscular wings—

like a catch in your throat—moving upstream,

following the dark riverbank?

Twilight marks passage over each bulge of the tilted

globe, and it’s twilight drives the hunter home.