Current Issue: Fall/Winter 2010

You Tell Me of the Winters in Laramie  
Corinna McClanahan Schroeder

And it’s the lot out behind the funeral home
that catches me, those boyhood afternoons
you and your brother spent there at the cusp
of a frozen bluebell field where piles
of plowed snow hulked.  David with his pick
and you with your shovel hollowing caves
in the mounds.  Breath whorled blue on the air
before vanishing, the snow packed tight
from mooncap knees.  Your father at work
on a sermon for Zion Lutheran, your mother’s
tumor still unformed, you worked wordlessly,
as you do now, each chamber just large enough
to crawl into.  Snow groaned all around. 
At dusk, the sky taut as a wound’s dressing,
you and David slipped back across the street
to fill buckets at the kitchen sink.  Your loads
splashed into that day’s cave, you were ready
for sleep, knowing water’s nature—how
it would freeze overnight and solidify the snow. 
Boys build forts which they keep long after
their forts’ demise.  Yours, husband, a glinting
chamber that could hold your body till spring.