Plow

Crash.
Shrieking steel impact
then silence.
Snow
blowing snow
on the white plain
and a yellow flashing light
on a yellow truck
with a state seal
on the door
familiar for its good salty work
now ground to a halt.

Shoe.
Hats and a university sweatshirt
speaking youth
but mutely
from the ditch.
A mangled first car
shunted by the plow
perversely converted
a container
of fate and urgency.

Sleep.
They were asleep.
The plow man numb.
Slumber soon to be
disrupted
surreal
by sirens and multicolored
lights
a blurred kaleidoscope
people disguising confusion
with pointing
shouting and scurrying.
Samaritans
veterans
of the first five minutes
displaced
by experts
but locked forever
into the muffled sounds
and shadows
of their snowy
waking.

This does not bode well.
When has Pride's waltz with the Dark
bode naught but ill?

Severe Prison

Hoary

Gently
on my lashes.
Deftly
on my tongue.
Novel
at first
then
less new
and finally
numbing.
Unique.
Every one.

Pure.
And pristine
until sullied
until slushed
by the traffic
the traffic
the traffic.

Encrusted.
Frozen fiasco.
Soot.
And gray.
Granular.
And black.
Slicked.
And yellow.
Pissed.

The paralysis
the stupor
lying in the drifts
as the fate
the fear
the faith and finality
the frost
the frost
the frost
... bites.