The Snow is Fast and Furious

The snow is fast and furious, but

I had to get out and drive,

cabin fevered with no cabin,

I fled into the late afternoon’s moon.

It was fine when I started, but

now I’m in a screaming squall,

but what I’m thinking about is gold.

On the road to sell grandma’s treasures,

and I knew it would all go wrong.

People have wasted kingdoms for gold,

spent their lives wandering through jungles, or

 Alaska bound, miners go to where the night is long

with their burdens on a donkey’s back,

to have it all go wrong.

The snow is forming droplets near my side view mirror,

shivering sideways down my side window,

looking like translucent beetles heading south.

The tire tracks are starting to be the only way to know

the lane I’m driving in,  which lane my life is in,

 and I think of the pioneers,

whose rutted paths were the way out West.

The jewelry store was closed, funny thing,

I knew it was going to be closed, but I came anyways

as if some witches spell mesmerized me

away from the house, into the storm.

People have started to skid off the road

with their four-wheel drive cars and trucks

going much too fast for a blizzard.

In this moment, I needed to be a steely-eyed pilot

finding my way through the blizzard, with my brakes missing,

and not enough runway to land.

Then it came to me,

I would need an excuse as it is

for wandering into a snowstorm for no particular reason,

I would go visit an old friend.

So I wandered over to her house

crisscrossing the countryside as if I were making a crazy quilt,

with my GPS on the blink because of the heavy snow, and

my grinding brakes will soon be useless.

I begin to realize that if I don’t reach her

my life might be a jumble of metal and ice,

piling up around concrete, to form a statue

of a woman trying to find a place to stay.

Then I realize all the gold in the world is worth nothing

if there isn’t a warmth hearth, some tea, and a friend

who welcomes me into her home.  I begin

 to see God in these dancing flakes swirling,

snow devils fly across the road.  It is all so beautiful.

The wind is driving the blizzard into my windshield, still

my wipers are squealing from not enough moisture.

The flakes are being wicked off my glass as fast as they fall.

I have to concentrate,

 be that steely-eyed pilot, gritting my teeth,

focusing only on those two long, bare tracks.

I might freeze in this storm if not for my friend, and then I know,

God was trying to tell me that gold is worthless if I have no home to go.