Over the Mountain

Lying in his armchair with a
joint in his mouth, my dad
decries and prophecies
and coughs at the television
sunk in the floor like a tomb
heavy with all the world’s ghosts.
He putts a ball into a machine
that shoots it back at him.

His uncle once told him “Someday
I’ll be going over the mountain and
I won’t be coming back.”

Mornings he and the dogs walk through the field
behind the church. He hits at the sticks he’s poked
into the earth to mark the holes
and the dogs chase after the balls and drop
them in the grass at his feet. Once
they brought him the femur of an autistic
girl who had been murdered along with
her unborn child a few doors down.

Her boyfriend buried her by the
creek in the woods out back.
His father shot himself when the
Police came to take his boy away.

Dad hurried the dogs home up the hill.
Someone else found the remains later
and we watched him on the news.