thought dream 020309

We drove for miles through a white-out,
the lines on the road vanishing beneath the snow,
the road vanishing beneath the snow. Bob Dylan's

"Visions of Johanna" on the tape deck in the
darkness. Trying to reach Denver by morning
in a shaky metal hull, like some bathysphere

cut loose in a powdery, bone-white ocean,
Buena Vista submerged somewhere off the
port side, the steady crunch of tire chains on

a buried highway. We could've easily driven
off the map, or over the side of Monarch Pass.
23 years-old and not giving a thought to

Death's centripetal pull sucking us towards
its wintery maw, the night a dull white lightscape,
everything outside the car lost in the roaring hush

of heavy snowfall, you and me singing, "A ghost
of 'lectricity howls in the bones of her face,"
until we finally had to stop the car, wondering

if we were still on the road, or still on the planet.
Praying an 18-wheeler wouldn't crush us
from behind, as we sat there in my old Honda

in a late winter white-out, middle of the night,
somewhere on Highway 285, waiting for impact,
slowly vanishing beneath the beautiful, vicious snow.