Behind our house, a soft bog
Digested things that died there.
I tested it with my shoes,
Expected hands upraised
Or at least a riot of worms.
Our nervous dog skittered
As if she anticipated births.
In that quagmire smother
Was a sign of spring.
The swamp, my father said,
Was spreading, bleeding out
From the earth’s black wound;
Our house lay downhill.
Some nights I expected
The gurgling of new voices
Thick with slime. Slipping
Under my door, they would
Bubble and multiply,
Rising, like ancestry,
Toward a common ceiling.
