Memorial Bench
Suzanne and Half Zantop loved sitting here—
sails warbling out like quarter notes in a fiddle contest
of sea and sky, the mew of two mated ospreys plunging
after gulls hatched on the island’s keening rookery—
before two Vermont boys, one crazy one not,
sawed their neck and chest like a deer carcass, winter 2001, their living
room, bedroom, kitchen bloodied with hacking knives, and we took
the cabin—Birch—they’d reserved for the summer.
The killers wanted money to be cowboys in Australia, said troopers
who cuffed them. Worse would happen that year.
Past the bench a guest rigs his hammock in the cool underside
of the dock. He climbs the struts and curls like a sailor
unborn in its red mesh. All month daylilies open like mouths
of baby birds, ready to swallow their one day. One day!
