That day, we drove a different road home
after crossing the Belvedere bridge,
winding down the river past a small farm
where a sign sold fresh brown eggs
then across a plank road over a marshy culvert
near a pull-off where swimmers
were loading their pickup with truck tubes
they’d dragged onto the sandy shore,
and around the next bend, just before
the Foul Rift railroad crossing,
a house on the left with a silhouette
of that holy family staked in the lawn,
a Christmas tree still burning in a window.
We were in the middle of a July heat wave,
brownouts countywide and preplanned
disruptions of power daily, hoping for
a squall to roll down from the Kittatinies
to water the garden and cool the air.
We had a tree that size we put up a week
before our daughter’s fatal.
Whatever month it was when we finally
took down that balsam it was a bigger
chore than we expected, packing away
the delicate glass ornaments, undoing
the twisted strings of mini lights,
and crinkled strands of silver tinsel.
After I kicked a wedge under the back door
we dragged that blasted fir outside,
tossed it into the woods, out of sight,
left a trail of desiccated needles trapped
in the nap of the carpet that years later,
turn up, prick our soles.