Winter Ride

A dark blacktop ribbon

stretches,

merging into the soft,

misty, battleship gray

curtain of sky.

Expansive.

Immense.

They meet at the edge

of  the broken horizon.

smudged with ever-changing shapes:

white wood-framed homes,

rustic barns,

livestock,

bare leaf-less trees

whose black arms branch into

countless twining fingers

reaching up at heaven.

Gnarly fingers these.

They threaten to rip and claw

through heaven’s floor.

At sixty the shapes last

only a few seconds.

Then transform.

Image after image.

At first the snow

falls gently,

white ashes from a bon-fire.

Then, like goose down from

a torn comforter,

snowflakes hide the sky

in massive whiteness.

Only the dark, blacktop ribbon

marks the way.

Once that succumbs to white

movement ceases,

transformed into

Isolation.