This is a real old poem that I think
I wrote about three years ago, maybe even longer than that.
But I still kind of like.
It's called "My Grandfather's Sins: Plainfield, Wisconsin."
It was years before they fell away, skulls
of pickerel and northern pike like reptiles he caught,
nailed man high behind the chicken coop on the big maple.
The leaves fell off like hands.
He went to Korea with the Red Cross,
sent me sandals, a wooden carabao, came home and died.
At night, elms dropped branches on the roof.
They said it was his heart, but I
know it was those clear tooth heads blind and weathering up
the tree.