The winter moon revealed everything
in its cold and silver light,
each crystal, each atom, every outline
no more than a needle’s width.
With snow no longer falling,
having already covered all,
the shadows of branches even,
showing through in fine black ink.
The dark red velvet of His wife’s dress
caught me unprepared, her black coat
opening and closing like wings in the
overpass of darkness and reflected snow.
I felt drugged, unable to register any emotion,
nor to summon any expression
to my face, although my hand must
have been warm on her pale cheek.
In the closed interior of the car
the heavy dress gave off a musty smell
and I strained to catch the fresh odor
of her flesh beneath.
She spoke in long, low sentences, split
into careful phrases as though I might
be a child or moron. Certain words
sounded queer and ancient, the vocabulary
of a skullcapped lawyer, inching through
syllables to consummate a dowry.
The driver’s speed turned the world
still, the passing snowscape frozen
in motion. Here the outline of a
leaning tree, cut in half by the
headlights’ beam, caught as though falling.
And a slope that humped to the very
edge of the road, blinking briefly what
might have been a formation of white
horses at full gallop, blasted into
stone by wind or rain.