Читать книгу Ordinary Time - Michael D. Riley - Страница 21

Snow savages the highway

with silence.

Where are the speeding cars

and trucks full of gears?

Where is the road?

Where is the lower yard?

The back porch stairs are gone.

We peer through windows frosted

with breath and our separate

reflected selves.

The ancient temptation

surrounds us. Alone

in our snowbound house, we look

without seeing. How natural

to be afraid.

The tree will not light,

nor the window candles

no traveler would see anyway.

Their blank bulbs are dead

to our rhythmic breathing.

Like half of those we love.

They are never home anymore.

Their decorations are boxed

and forgotten. It is too cold

altogether, and we are snow blind.

Our breath is visible.

Wind moans down the chimney,

leaps with feral eagerness

onto the side porch.

You squeeze my hand.

Our mantel crèche is lost

in shadow as if the child

were never born. The ox, sheep,

camel and kings stare

into the darkness to find him.

I remember years ago,

the cabin drifted in, oil-line frozen,

my iron zero skeleton

an aching cage, three days

to thaw back into life.

Perhaps the everyday—

tinsel, lights, wrapped gifts—

will not return this time.

Perhaps all will be overturned

tonight in a storm

sufficient to the need,

great annunciatory wings

of snow wrapping a body

finally laid to rest.

Come, Holy Spirit.

Grasping hands empty

of things, strong legs

with nowhere left to go,

the brain dims its energy

in favor of the heart,

and in darkness the child

grows, the idea

of the child grows near

thanks to an emptiness

almost perfect.

Come, Holy Spirit.

Beat your wings in time

to our blood-pulse, the lone

plow scraping at the silence,

and this one flickering streetlight.