Driving Mountain Roads in Winter
plowed snow walls blur past,
phantasmic in the headlights' sidelong vision.
the old engine chatters like teeth in the long cold climb.
mind wanders skeletal forms arch overhead,
i push on scatter of wipers, buzz of chains
on near-ice, hands sheathed in deerskin,
breath frosted, night a deep black tunnel,
burrows of hare and vole beneath the white.
push on, through untried white, this night,
white in black, black is white,
this instant claims past and future,
axis of eternity anchored here,
collapsed to ring of light
advancing in the eerie
moonless wood.
- bruce g marcot
Photo © Bruce G. Marcot; winter mountain road on Six Rivers National Forest, northwestern California.
