Of hoofbeats thumping on a hard-packed,
Shiny road of snow? Or
is
that great
Onset of silences itself a
Great white silence? The crunching of wet
Snow around my knees seems louder, now
That the noises of the fear and what the
Fear
is
of are louder too, and in
The presence of such sounding depths of
Terror, it
is
harder than ever
To believe what I have always heard:
That it feels at first like spasms of
Indigestion. The thought, as one shoves
Scrapingly at the snow that always
Seems to happen to things and places
That have been arranged just so, the thought
Of being able to wonder if
Something I'd eaten had disagreed
With me, the while waiting to die,
is
Ridiculous. "Was
it
something I
felt?" "Something I knew?" "Something I was?"
Seem more the kind of thing that one might
Wonder about, smiling mildly, as
He fell gently no great distance to
The cushioning world that he had dug.
Silently-for to call out something
In this snow would be to bury it.
And heavily, for the weight of self
Is more, perhaps at the end, than can
Be borne.
No, it is only now, as
I urge the bending blade beneath a
Snow-packed tire for what I know can
Not be the last time that I whimper:
I hate having to own a car; I
Don't want to dig it out of senseless
