Ann Chinnis

To My Father on My 67th Birthday

I hated your decoys, the red-breasted

merganser, the blue-winged teal,

the northern pintail you jailed

on your bookshelf. I reviled you

as childish for buckling them

into our station wagon

on the opening day of hunting season,

always

on my Halloween birthday.

At bedtime, I loathed you

for softly drying their rubber

and pine, while forgetting to wish me

Happy Birthday. I loved to twist

a ballpoint pen into the red-headed

canvasback’s belly, to biopsy why

you loved it. On my eighth birthday,

I hounded you to take me hunting.

I wanted to carry your dull

Lesser White Whistling.

I wanted you to look up at the sky,

to say it was the blue of my eyes.

I wanted you to put the top down

on the Cadillac convertible

you spray-painted green and concealed

in the cornfield. I wanted to lie down

in the back seat. I wanted you

to cover me with straw. I wanted

to be one of your

decoys.

I didn’t want to slip on the muck.

I didn’t intend to fall in the river

with your lesser white whistling.

I hugged your decoy

as if it were drowning;

like a mother or father, I never let go.

You yelled: Go wait in the station wagon

until I am done huntin’, as I caught

the car keys you threw at me. I was ashamed

to unlock the car. Mom taught me not

to sit on a seat in wet clothes. I refused

to get in and to turn on the heater,

until I could no longer feel

my toes and my fingers. Even now, Dad,

on a cold day, when I hear a car lock

click open, and I inch onto a vinyl seat—

it feels like losing everything.