The snowdrift is a monument
to the storm passed to sea.
Sunlight piercing at noon –
I avert my eyes from the illumination.
Twenty years ago, just a few miles from here,
my car was stranded in snow.
I’d penciled some words on the back
of a shopping list, I could actually die out here.
Furniture was plunging in the surf,
the windshield went blank.
Then the samaritans arrived, struggling hip-deep
behind sweeping beams, coffee on their breath.
Something blowing through and covering the world,
godly or bestial – I had no preference,
lost in the blizzard. A list of bread, eggs, and milk,
wave-spray shattering over the seawall,
then blind sensations, and now, the drift
too brilliant to see, the crunch
of steps approaching.