Birth of a Naturalist

by Nicholas Yingling

 

Not far from the cabin where you were born,
where you first learned to reach

with your soles, no bigger than wood frogs,
and feel the lining

of your mother, where they pulled you out
and taught you kick,

we walk through a field of dropseed
waiting for my first snow.

Our feet make shovel sounds across the ice
and my fingers shrivel

into their sleeves. I have always run cold.
You know this,

take my whole hand in your palm—
the skin loose

enough for the both of us
that I might slip in

and let you carry me through the winter
as your daughter did.

If I asked, you would say I am no less
of your body than hers

and somehow I would know this is only
a gentle untruth.

Instead I let go. The blackbears are near,
their lips stripping

the branches, the last berries
gelled in ice,

bunched like frogspawn. We follow them
into elm

and ash. Their bellies, violet and hot
with sweetness,

begin to cool.
They prepare their dens.

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NICHOLAS YINGLING’s work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in Colorado Review, Spillway, Notre Dame Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Palette Poetry, and others. He splits his time up and down the Pacific Coast.