In the attic, behind gray metal
filing cabinets crammed with defunct
warranties and cancelled checks,
I found the recurved lemonwood
bow I bought the year I met
my wife. Its leather finger
and forearm guards still hung
on a nock. The bowstring looped
through dust and the quiver
folded in on itself beneath
the window that was losing
its winter light by the minute.

Some mornings the bow was
all I brought back,
slowly leaving my life
in her care, burying its
worst moments like the arrows
I would lose in the long grasses
behind her country home.
I lived to draw the bowstring
arrowless to the anchor point,
to hold still—forefinger brushing
my beard—and sight the mist
rising at daybreak before I left
for a house I lived in by myself.

The bow’s belly is a shade
lighter than its back and shows
crosswise cracks. Its handle
is marked by the flight
of arrows aimed at paper
foxes tacked to hay bales.
After twenty years, I doubt
my aim. But it feels right
to take the bow in my hands
again, to flex it against
my foot, to ease the string
in place and carry it out
into the long fields
that border our life.