for Bill & Randy
Deep winter,
barely the new year in.
the lane impassible,
we parked the car on Highway 55
and hiked a freezing mile
through a pine infused shadows.
Arriving at the ice crusted cabin,
we gathered wood, paper, matches
built a fire in the cast iron stove,
and huddled until heat overtook cold.
Before sleep, we stepped out into midnight,
looked up brilliant at the jewel scattered sky,
and wrote our human script on crystal snow.
Sixty winters have come and gone,
and as many mammal gilded snows.
My two companions lost to me
in the river flow of time.
Yet this warm recollection remains frozen
in the disjointed timeline of my mind.
a living moment ignoring then and now.
__________________________________________________________________________
This experience with two friends happened sixty years ago this month.
The poem has been incubating for six decades. I wrote it today.