BLIZZARD

Where were you going that late

December night, driving into the darkness,

furious flurries swooping down from

the universe like stars

splattering the windshield?

Driving the old highway west

as if there was something

really out there, ahead, just beyond

the farm, beyond the next stretch

of fields filled with cornstalk ghosts

now buried into memory.

The road was not plowed.

All you could see was the semblance,

you were driving by recall,

following the slow bends, spotting

the snow covered arrow signs

that pointed deeper into the night.

At three am you reached

the yellow blinking eye

of Bangor, barn lights

glowing like halos. All night

you felt the pull of the west.

In South Haven you fishtailed

the empty streets in slow motion,

like some dream of desperation, snow

splashing against the glass

until you reached the frozen shore,

the pier, the urgent waves thick

with ice, black turbid water rolling in

drunkardly. There, at the edge of the pier,

among the snow still falling,

and the heaving waves,

you could not see the lighthouse

but you could see the blurry light

circling. There was some miracle

in all of this, the silence

inside your car, it was almost

too unmoving, almost narcotic,

waiting there in the great stillness,

your wordless thoughts and

the muffled snow falling

like smeary stars against the glass.