Darkening
The simple joy of riding with good friends
in a car coming back from a barn dance
on the edge of a great lake in mid-March,
driving through falling snow on blizzarding
country roads, past farms, silos, cattle barns
recessed in deep shadows as Stand By Me
spills from the radio. But on that night
our car hit black ice and skittered across
the road’s slick surface like a water bug
— twenty-odd yards — before coming to rest
in a snowbank beside a farmer’s house.
A man appeared out of the dark, walking
down his laneway. He asked if anyone
was hurt. Are you okay? Seeing the car
was undamaged, he said he could tow it
out with his tractor. I remember that
night walking up the road, a hundred yards
or more, in the moonless dark, without so
much as a flare or a flashlight to wave down
passing cars, wondering why my friends
and I had survived the crash. Wondering
why I was not dead. I can still see myself
standing impatiently, wind barreling
across fields, over snow fences, the cold
licking raw the flesh beneath my jacket,
trying to hail the drivers of three cars
not bothering to stop, not quite certain
whether they saw a figure half-glimpsed
in the helixing snow at that late hour,
a messenger risen up from the ground,
to warn them of some impending hazard
until too late they found an old tractor
upon the road. And what I remember
of that night will not call back anyone
from the past. Not the vehicles swerving
to carve a wide groove in a winter field
crusted with thin ice and eddying snow.
Not the farmer on the tractor cursing,
his breath rising, a white scar, mixing in
plumes of diesel smoke in the chilly air.
Not even my younger self, who I see
standing roadside like an apparition
turning his body to stare back down
the dark hallway of a moment ago.