One Method of Hope

The only motion here is an old 
Dodge pickup leading a coil 
of white exhaust across 
the horizon—a snow-dusted 
road—crosshatched and barren 
farm land. You point your jaw 
and your etched-out eyes 
across the wheel, overlooking 
the one wire-limbed hickory 
on the rise and the flock 
of nervous geese that wanders 
in a patch of late-winter ice 
and corn stubble. Your gaze 
is steady. You never catalogued 
the pain of your losses 
or claimed a vacant stratosphere. 
There’s comfort in that. 
Yours isn’t the only way to endure 
a savage flurry of solemnities, it is 
one way, one voice that you recall, 
one parable of grief corroding 
direction, but on your life 
you can’t remember where you 
heard it first. There is a raw 
and unchecked safety in accelerating 
down a lone and narrow ribbon 
of this bleak and unbending world. 
You’re still hours from home. 
The anonymous beauty 
of your solitude fades to twilight 
before it can start to mean 
what you really want it to.