On days such as this
when snow and stillness
hang in the air like dread,
my father waits, ready to deliver
a speech
as if all silence
is merely an occasion
for another story.
I am driving to the Home
that is not his home.
Red brick building
where he lives with his pocketful
of jokes and no memory.
Snow whirls to churn
and without warning
I am stranded
inside a white-out. Snow
crosshatching Illinois roads,
building in drifts,
white flames
devouring the flat highway.
He waits, watches
the door. Anticipation
turning nameless,
shapeless as fog
while the road
to find him
appears briefly,
briefly, and then vanishes,
nothing in sight
but fine dust sent flying
by the whine of wind.
Furious fits that howl
and swirl, creating a whiteness
like darkness where nothing
can be seen and no turning back.
Ginnie Goulet Gavrin is a retired massage therapist. She teaches meditation and writing workshops at the Monadnock Mindfulness Practice Center in Keene, New Hampshire. Her work has appeared in The Literary Review, Slipstream, Cold Mountain Review, Tar River Poetry, Pensive, a Journal of Spirituality and the Arts, The Dodge, Kitchen Table Quarterly, Chatauqua Poetry, and Constellations.