Emergency
I
At sunset, driving an interstate
sheared by a last slash of daylight,
yet slowed by signs for roadside
repairs, we seem to be near the edge
of another evening. In the flatness
of this distant light, hills still gilded
and gradually darkening sky alternate
as if stitched to one another. Closer by,
the whole terrain filled with patterned
parcels of vast farmland now appears
sewn together as well. Once again,
we are going nowhere we haven’t been
before, but in this season nothing
seems the same. Even sharply traced
outlines and the carefully displayed
spacing of a mid-spring landscape vary
from the wintry disarray of those
shadowy scenes seen six months earlier,
viewed with apprehension, but just
starting to take shape in our memories.
II
The last night we passed this way,
plowed snow banks rose beside a highway
windswept, meadows lay in moonlight
like white pages left blank and awaiting
composition. At times, we would see
a single stretch of evergreens shielding
someone’s home, the long silhouettes
of tall trees extending like lengthening
lines of prose or a few chosen words
of poetry scrawled across an imaginary
scroll; and the far fields’ darker rows
of furrows bared by gusts seemed set
together like etched letters on a pale
slate of stone. At that time of emergency,
in truth, neither of us noticed any
of them as our car rushed past. Only today
are these images beginning to emerge.
Then, it had only been a gray day in late
December, our daughter was dying,
and we were merely trying to get to her.
—Edward Byrne, Valparaiso, IN
