Marlene and I spent summers

on the beach at Lake Hopatcong 

listening to Nat King Cole on our portable.

Lathered in baby oil, faces tilted to the sun, 

my sister smoking her purloined Pall Malls.

Daddy was a whistler—

pop songs, operatic arias, all four

movements of Beethoven’s Fifth.

He would walk to the edge  

of the front lawn and whistle:

one trumpet-like blast followed

by a trilled coda that traveled

more than a mile down the road; 

a signal that brought us from the beach

up the hill in time for dinner.

My sister died last summer,

recovering from ‘successful surgery.’

They weren’t certain how it happened.

Doctors told us it was probably

her heart—just like her father. 

Except it wasn’t like his death.

She died in her sleep, alone. 

But that night, I know he 

stood at the edge of the hill  

and whistled her home.