Ohio Understory Poem by Corinna McClanahan Schroeder

Incongruent—her body there, walking
the hem of that interstate loop, then gone.
I've found the facts—the thermometer's

needle poised above freezing,
Friday night unraveling into something
not yet morning, an obstinate inch

of snow. Karen's sister-in-law claimed
there was an argument, her Buick
pulling over, smack of the passenger door.

There was not wind, I know,
but the teeth of a fog and the sleeping
towns that skirt Cincinnati. Exits

for Loveland-Madeira, Wards Corner,
Route 28. A black tributary unwrapped
beneath a high bridge. Ten thousand

maples and locusts, just spindles in winter,
clutched the knuckled hills. No apparent
entrance, even now, into that understory.

The sister-in-law told police Karen sludged
north. A woman, a year later, put a shivering
girl of the same description heading south,

a red pickup with Kentucky plates braking.
What's most certain is the mother's speech—
"In my heart, I've always been sure Karen died

early that morning." I was sleeping, that same
morning, in a farmhouse a few miles away.
I wouldn't learn of Karen until years later,

but back then, age four, I could still accept
that some stories don't end. A body there,
walking the hem of the hawkish woods—then gone.