White Noise

Feb 10 2013


The snow machine
ripped the frozen silence
with its grating grinding shriek,
a wounded beast.
Its armoured driver
in gauntlet hands, tinted visor
is intoxicated on speed,
the stink
of half-burned gas.

As animals freeze, or flee,
while all he sees
is the easy path
of tunnel vision,
the aperture of his eye
constricting down
to haste
and distance.

He dopplers here, and back,
then invisibly past

the sweet-spot,
where snow-draped trees, heavy powder
obliterate sound.
Or is it the curve of the earth
that's come between us;
as if he'd dropped off the edge,
had never even been?
Like when the fridge stops
with a nervous shudder,
and in the sudden quiet
you hear how loud it was.

I am tempted to follow
his straight and narrow track
so well compacted.
But I'd rather struggle
through unbroken snow,
sinking halfway up my knees.
Weave, flounder, fall
in deep virgin powder.
Like a Sunday drunk
at some ungodly hour
stumbling home.

But here and now
I'm dry as a priest,
sober, all-seeing.
As a rabbit darts past
in the blink of an eye
in its winter white,
a window of safety.

From diabolical machines
unholy racket.
Knowing the first fresh snow
will bury its tracks,
the forest go back
to nature.