She hitches up her blue jeans 
and adjusts her trusty
pocket knife before climbing 
into the green pickup with her father 
and bouncing down the back roads 
to the upper field of Buckwalter’s farm 
to shoot groundhogs 
as the sun angles low in the November sky, 
its light grazing the bleached-out stumps 
and torn leaves of last season’s corn, 
the ripples of plowed earth slumping 
into winter’s slumber—
but each still casting its own indigo shadow, 
together reading like a topographical map 
for the V of geese high in the western reaches 
of the ice-blue sky. She and her father 
lie down side-by-side like comrades 
under an oak at the edge of the field 
that caps the hilltop, 
the whole empty landscape 
sloping away in all directions. 
She is almost motionless beside her father and his shotgun, 
with sticks and rocks poking her stomach and thighs. 
Propping herself up on her forearms, she studies 
skeletons of leaves as the shadows of branches 
creep like the clock of a lone woodsman—
her father beside her silent as stone, 
giving her the chance to prove 
how tough she has become 
as the cold of the ground seeps into her limbs 
and there are no groundhogs and no words, 
and later to remain wordless for the ride back, 
except to say thank you for the stick of peppermint gum. 
After sliding from the seat of the truck she grabs 
the pebbly-skinned basketball
to work on her aim, to loosen her stiff arms and legs
and she doesn’t hear her mother step outside, 
her father pulling his wife in by the waist, 
tilting his thumb back at her,
saying it’s too bad she’s not a boy— 
his words drowned out 
by the steady beat of the basketball 
speaking its own rhythmic language 
beneath her practiced hand.