Night Piece

My wife, lost in long snow and dead of night, struggles to reach some safe house. Her covers, carefully made tight when the sleep began, relapse.

And through the iron arrowheads of Riley, Uncle Fred, those men like pointed fences who disapproved, she works her body toward escape.

Only the blue-striped pillow that she holds as a child holds the hand of a stranger, goes with her, takes the ice floes in stride, knows there is some protection against the giant face,

that somewhere the long snow falling in iron arrows, must stop its fall, the friendly house be helpfully at hand where approval lives in a kind magnificence, easy to see, easy to understand.