Brenda Sutton Rose



Road Trip to Snow
 
I swear we will never find the place. A right off
Highway 41 South. South, you tell me, nearly
pleading, softly praying, always south.
We cruise past corduroy fields,
freshly plowed,
grooves, ridges, rows,
pressed, creased,
like brown school pants across a summer landscape.
And I ask you
when will we arrive.
     Too late, you tell me,
        too late.

Take a right on this dirt road,
Curling into a day splattered among four colors
and no sign of a mailbox.
By startling the crows
we paint the sky black.
This is the place,
oh God, this is the place.
Look at the birds, you say,
look at the birds.

And

    I look, I stare,

    I shudder.


I follow your footprints
to the back yard and watch
you peer inside where
a door is torn away
to reveal your childhood.
Floors collapsing, boards rotting:
A room, red as liquid guilt.
A boy, a brother. A father.
A pair of brogans.
A sister (you),
a daughter (you)
crouched,
praying under this starving,
broken porch. You. You. You.
The 1930s turned into the 1940s, you whisper,
   the depression
   wouldn't let go. It wouldn't let go.

You tell me it snowed one day
and you tasted the miracle of the color white,
a handful, scooped up,
melting like hope in your mouth.
You called for your brother
who pulled himself from the silence of death,
snow dripping from his warm mouth,
a smile lifting his face, and came to
you one final time. He told you,
his little sister, a secret:
Angel’s wings melt into snow.
Together, you ate handfuls of the stuff.
You tell me,
   I never tasted snow again.
      It would never feel as good as it did that day.

Did you feel hope melting, icy in your mouth,
when I dampened your dying lips?
Did your son’s voice cool your fevered flesh?

Did you dream of a snowy day in the 1940s
before you wore gray in your hair, and did you
savor the color white as you drifted away?
These thoughts come
storming at me like falling
angel wings after we
blanket you in the ground.

I brew, knowing the answers will not be found here.

I slide my car into reverse
but I can’t turn around;
   I am stuck in a snowstorm.




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