PASSING THROUGH
BY CLAIRE NICHOLSON
|| Beaverdam Swamp Creek || We drive slowly through the snow as the roads wind tighter and
tighter. Fog tries to escape distant mountain ledges like secrets into cold air || Bottoms Bridge ||
We pass rows of Christmas trees, bowed in stoic silence. These farms are an ancient
patience—too old for us, too old for their caretakers, young enough for the snow || Cripple Creek
|| Gray trolls peer from below covered bridges and witches barter jars of crabapple jelly at
roadside stands || Snakeroot Rd. || At a store without a name, an old blind woman sits and drinks
evergreen tea, bitter || Furnace Brook || We pass dead houses like poems: hard to break into. All
cracked shutters and rusted nails, they grow twisted and stiff from the frozen land. Broken steps
lead to broken windows || Warwick Bridge || Dirt roads loop together in fierce knots as we stare
at the people without faces, bundled in the cold. They hold tangles of ice skates which seethe like
rat kings, on the way to the ponds || Tarbox Farms ||