Today I was not strong enough
to let the newspaper be. Reading out
all the squabbles large and small,
near and far, I felt sourness
rise in me like water in a straw.
 
Now nearing midnight, wind raises 
its wordless ruckus all over town—
that great nothing that is something—
and I open a book older than I
will ever be, and begin reading again.
                        

We cruise north along the Connecticut River
so he can see snow shining on the hills,
sweep past ground he has ridden on horse or bike,
 
eddies and expanses of frozen river he rowed
in his fluent days. The pilot light of recognition
has not yet guttered out: raw pleasure
 
in naming Smarts Mountain, Orford Commons,
The Chieftain motel, even that blank lot
where for a few years a French restaurant simmered.
 
Names are so easy on his tongue today
I can't decide if this is worse or better
than muddle and delusion, these taunting glimpses,
 
these lucid landmarks lost in ice fog.
I've been meaning to tell you, he suddenly says,
I was just elected Senator from Vermont.
 
In a write-in campaign. . . . "But Dad, you've 
never lived in Vermont." I know! It was news
to me, too! Satisfied equally by such visions 
 
and the split-rail fences of Route 10, silent now,
he's still the father who can deliver me,
however briefly, into the winter sun.
                        

Three cars in a row, dark sporty jobs,
whoosh out of the parking lot.
 
Some meeting must have just let out:
alone at each wheel, a man in a suit,
 
cell to his ear as he drives one-handed.
All talking fast, perhaps to each other,
 
each face angry as a match head.