Flying to South Dakota, April 2000

Flying to Dad’s Funeral


The unpleasant premonition
 that we’ve walked this earth with less gusto
 and a hollow ring to our sloughing steps.
Myself knelt down to survey
 the treeless moldings
 of snow-blasted, snow-softened
 Greenland – or was it Prince Rupert Island?
My first Leif Erikson view
 out above the clouds
which offer their blanket
 to stark masses of untamed land.

A certain pang struck me
 as rills of sub-zero groundswells
 arched in fish-fin precision
 over and against unsmuch’t whiteness
                                           of inviting purity.

My gaze sought out a sign of spring -
 a lifeline to thaw the taut expanse
 to relax frozen kinks
 of steel-gray shoulders.

I cast out for a lone ambling deer,
 a sliver of melt streaking the face
 of cold December
 with April’s fledgling warmth.