SNOW BEAST
Somewhere south of East Aurora
A peaceful flake or two
Suddenly became a luminous curtain of fog.
The high beams just blinded her,
But the lows died in their tracks.
She thought about turning the headlights out.
Street lights can be landmarks.
She clicked off the radio and two-fisted the steering wheel.
Back and forth, up and down, pulsating around the car,
The snow suspended all time and space.
So really, where IS the road?
Then faint tracks told her
Others could be crawling toward the same destination.
She saw dim lights up ahead
Creeping in a 10 mph line through the snow mist,
Like an electric snake wrapped in a shroud.
At the head, a big plow blew billows of white spray apart
Like the prow of a ship parting waves on a stormy sea,
Making for ports of Chaffee, Sardinia, and points beyond.
Plaintively, she called:
What's your weather like?
I looked out the window, and saw
Nothing much going on!.
She replied,
Check the radar! I am crawling in a snow-bound hell!
So I did, and there it lived on my radar screen.
Just a few miles north,
A big green and pink wound on the landscape,
Obliterating, deepening, alive and replicating
at 2 inches an hour, borne from an unfrozen lake.
The snow beast was playing with her life.
Then out of the maw she saw the best ad ever:
A Burger King sign!
There is hope she told me as she found the beef.
Finally I saw the tractor beam of her headlights
Guiding her into the garage.
She blew through the door, and announced:
AND WE LIVE HERE WHY??
As we watched a few harmless flakes swirl softly outside,
White moths playing around our porch light,
Numbly we wondered,
Just when and where does beauty become the beast?
JMB-March 2016