Ice Storm
All evening we listened to the sky
fall into the trees.
As the dusk gathered, grain by grain,
the weight accumulated
until the great branches creaked.
Around the house the old boughs bowed, touched their knuckles
to our windowpanes.
Then, at the yard's edge, one branch buckled.
Soon a limb knocked the mailbox from its post.
And as the darkness fell, far off and close,
we found the sounds of each tree's ruin
betrayed its species:
at the breaking point, pines popped
like potshots, plummeted from treetops;
but the oaks surrendered when one sinew split,
and the limb, shoulder-ripped, tipped earthward,
arcing through the hundred years
it had risen in the air,
crashing like a chandelier,
crystals skittering across the porch.
After midnight, as we heard the silent storm
wreck the architecture of the woods,
came what we expected:
the nightlight extinguished, the subterranean thrum
of the furnace ceased.
The cedar lay down on the cellar door.
When in the room’s stillness we could smell the cold,
we called the kids into our bed.
From the top of the linen closet, the quilts
came down, and we settled under their weight.
We heard the ice mantle and dismantle the forest,
holding one another for heat.
Toward dawn, nodding in our wooden shell
we did not know
what world light would reveal.
We knew we could not know
of those we held, in that blanketed embrace,
parent and child,
companion and spouse,
who might fall,
who would bear up.