Mount Hood
Waking to the tick
and beep
of
machines
he cannot see:
eyes
blinking,
taking
on fluorescent light
in
the twitch of his body
cadaver
entering
the world of breath,
tube
in his mouth, his fingers touching it:
the
boys back
in his brain:
chopper
circling above him,
Larson,
Navickus, Walsh and Stone,
shouting,
huddling over the
bodies
with
him,
hoisting
them out of the snow,
their
faces blue and puffy,
lips
stitched
with ice.
The
ropes, the copter’s blades:
giant bug whirring into the sky
and
then rolling down the mountain,
Stone
rubbing his hands, saying
“We
got them,” telling the story
of
his ancestors, the homesteaders,
Children’s
Blizzard, forty degrees
below zero,
hundreds
dead on the drifted prairie,
dozens
of boys and girls caught
in
place,
upright,
walking
home from school,
manikins
frozen
into statues by a
monster
no
one foretold—Stone holding on
to
the words, his laughter turning ironic,
and,
out of nowhere,
the
storm coming back—
all
of them dismissing
the
train-like roar of wind, Larson
grabbing
him,
white
teeth flying across the sky—
its
coming on,
crystals of ice
sparking
their
lips, a heavy-headed
howl
exhausting its rumble—
and
staying calm,
the
staying, staying
until
Larson’s knees buckle
and
he tumbles
down
the slope, a rag doll swallowed
by
the ravening white, the light
a bright darkness,
a
touchless braille they enter,
crow-dark
in its white blind—
panic
that ordered the strength and speed
to
get to Larson, to grip their ropes,
speak
to each other in the pull
and
tug
of
direction--the crack of avalanche
reporting
in the ravine.
That
coming back, now,
to
the storm’s waning,
snow
chalking a starless sky:
their
torsos buried--
the
palate beginning to freeze
and
breath balling up in the lungs--
and
dreaming: a room of flashbulbs
that
don’t stop popping,
a
volley of needles that sting the skin,
and
praying,
the words of thighbones
gone
cold, a rented breath that tries
to
lift the body from the drift.
And
the second waking,
a
coming out
of
the snow’s silver,
his
mind coming back
to
his lips and skin,
the
tick, tick of the room,
the
women
he has loved,
his
children and friends—he wants
his
eyes to come out of the yellow-black
dots
before him, his mind to muscle up.
He
tries to remember names,
the
boys he could not save,
their
corpses
warm
and dead.
His
speech abiding the coma’s letting go,
his
patient tongue
still
stalked
by
the sky’s devils, he waits
in
rest, numb,
almost
bodiless, floating,
a
little thing,
silent,
stunned, stung.
The
Weatherwoman
predicted the
speed of collapse.
Hurricane after hurricane, we tuned in
to watch the floods, the cadavers
washed up on city streets.
That summer she reported
the facts and numbers
like a sentinel passing his watch.
Each night she appeared
in a new skirt and an angelic smile.
My wife and I
loved her.
We took note of every change:
her haircut, the hurried words,
her loss of weight.
One night a dark-haired man
replaced her.
His voice reminded us
of an old friend,
and then, after a week without her voice,
she was back, cheery and bright
as the hope in a change of season.
An umbrella on her shoulder,
she forecast the sun and a long, dry spell.
That evening she was brilliant.
She thanked her viewers for their cards
and told us that “love takes us
to the strangest of places.”
We never saw her
again.
The anchor announced her passing
in a mournful way that segued
into the statistics of suicide,
the latitude and longitude of love.
We packed our
bags
and flew to Chicago
to bury her in the plot she bought.
She would never come home,
this woman of sky and clouds and rain.
She was the girl who had the world,
who had the day’s weather to report,
our girl, the girl we always had to watch.