There was that moment when the tires seemed
no longer in contact with anything, when the slide
at that slow speed, like those Sergio Leone Westerns,
that slow pulling out of guns from holsters, the slow
close up of the sweat falling down the craggy face,
the bright splash of blood, snail’s pace charge,
the dead villain floating backward off the horse
disappearing in the dust, then all returns to normal speed.
The moment I looked at you as the car slowly slid
first left then diagonally across the right lanes, Yeats’
gyre came to mind, widening spire, no footing,
no mooring, no traction, but there was this crazy
beauty in the snow blowing horizontally out of the woods,
fat snowflakes like winter owls lit by headlights from trucks,
the only lights coming in slivers through the fence
separating northbound from southbound, and who
wrote “Snowbound”? I wondered, and you were
so lovely in the light from the snow and the trucks,
I wasn’t worried, the car in its skidding over the ice.
It had its loveliness, like skaters only more graceful
and without the annoying music, your eyes wide and
intently interested in it all, that complete attention,
our breathing stopped while watching it happen,
our car somehow sliding completely around, coming
to a gentle, silent stop, inches from the railing,
perfectly lined up, you said afterward, as if I had
parallel parked, but our lights facing the way we had come.
Then we both breathed, and then continued, ice and snow
bright and cheerful, rushing at the windshield, and it
was as if the film had resumed normal speed. That night
from our window we watched the snow falling into the fields;
in the snug room I felt that floating slow motion slide
that freedom from earth, from traction, from gravity,
the light coming in through slivers where the curtain
did not close completely, and the one light we left on,
your eyes shot me through the heart, your skin lit me
with celebratory flames, and we slid breathless,
weightless, fused, floating without gravity.