by Gillian Sze

We drive south to Dundee
to the point where your ancestors settled,
a family of masons from Scotland
bringing nothing much but a spinning wheel.

Your father’s affair severed you in four.
You haven’t returned to the old brick house;
your cut limbs
couldn’t hold a fishing rod, a rifle.

Outside the window, snow geese gather on the ice
and you slow down to look out my side,
tell me as they all rise up at once,
When one goes, the rest of them follow.

I watch them take flight, fleeing
the things we do to each other.

Editors' note: Read "A Cup of Fine Tea: Gillian Sze's "Sonnet II"" here. Also, a review of Sze's Fish Bones is available in issue #8 of Cha.