Begin Anywhere

I could begin with my father’s strong right arm

 

heaving his shotgun into the lake.

 

This is usually where I begin. Or I could begin

 

with my half-sister standing at the top of the hill

 

looking down at my father’s back as he hurls the gun

 

into the lake—not crying, just looking out at the lake

 

and the ducks on the other side eating the crumbs

 

Mrs. Dyer throws to them. Yes, looking

 

as a few of them—not too many—fly off

 

at the sound of the gun stock’s heavy splash. 

 

Or I could begin after the splash, with the ducks

 

flying back to the bread. Or, ten minutes earlier,

 

with my father not consoling, but wanting to console

 

my half-sister as she stands there, a shadow’s length

 

from the doorway watching him hold

 

what’s left of his first wife. Of course I could begin

 

with his wife shooting herself

 

in my half sister’s abandoned playhouse. I could

 

begin with my father carefully unlinking the gun

 

from her toe, or even earlier in the day,

 

with my sister having come home from school

 

calling for her mother in the backyard,

 

peeking into her old playhouse

 

which she hadn’t been playing in. 

 

I could begin with her coming home

 

and not finding her mother,

 

the house dark and nothing cooking,

 

no light in the kitchen, no whir of the stove fan.

 

Or I could begin later, with my father parking

 

his great, golden Lincoln

 

having had an alright day, not a great day—

 

the high of having made the morning sale

 

worn off by the afternoon’s empty store parking lot.

 

I begin with this because to begin with the fact

 

that my father has never spoken of this thing

 

living in me since I was the age of my half-sister,

 

or to begin with the lake which I grew up on,

 

ice skated on—which the state drained when I was three

 

and did not find a gun,

 

is to begin with the idea that if no one found the gun,

 

then there is no way to begin.

 

No one officially looked for the gun, of course,

 

but surely Mrs. Dyer must have worried

 

over the story of the gun’s disappearance,

 

seeking some explanation for it all.

 

 

 

---

“Begin Anywhere” is from Begin Anywhere (Alice James Books, 2008).