every branch, every wire is frozen clean around

i cannot spell strathacona.
i left that language in the steam over the city,
cumulo-nimbus pulling out from smokestacks
and bleeding off into the white,
the white of the fog,
the white of your skin,
the white of the drifts, the flakes, the banks.

white fingers out across the road as we cut
an insistent streak of grey, travelling the wrong way.
the white waves over these hills,
over these stands of trees,
over those clumps of hedge.
i do not understand the speed at which we crash
through the troughs of these swells.
i do not understand the geography that pulls the land into unfamiliar shapes.
where is the distraction of green pines?
where is the distraction of faded grass?


there is more truth in these hills than I am accustomed to;
the sweep of white frothing out like a sheet of static,
settling over the slow curves of the ground.