After dark one night—our first  
winter in the country—my father,  
city boy with skyscraper-size  
suspicions, called the state police.  

A two-tone farm van, surely 
from the downhill neighbors, 
had parked down the road 
lights blinking in odd patterns.  

My father didn’t yet have his 
Doberman and Trooper Brookes 
answered the call, the van gone 
by the time he arrived. He hurried  

all worries to the bottom of our minds’ 
decks, though my father’s eye tics still 
swarmed like fireflies around 
his Brooklyn stutter. He’d hated  

city life, longed to grow his own corn 
and asparagus. And then that van 
pulled up. So, spring brought 
a black and tan pup and by next  

winter we could settle into family 
games of canasta and pinochle— 
where we parked our bids  
with just a frisson’s worth of risk.