Whiteout

We have reached the brink
where anger morphs
and headlong words
are spiked gloves
propelling us down the chute
as if we are a luge
veering off its line—my
“How could you?”
inciting your, Not again!
“But you never—”
Just leave it,
I hate you I hate you—and how
we rocket through blind curves,
half-flattened by shock, and
my jaw locks, maybe
yours too, except,
sucked into one long blur,
steeled against ice, it seems
nothing slows runaway pride
save the tundra of self-
loathing, much farther down
near the end
of the run, where, yes,
good Lord, there . . .
out of nowhere . . . hear it?
A birdlike call to mirth.

--
Laurie Klein is the author of a chapbook (Bodies of Water, Bodies of Flesh) and two collections (House of 49 Doors: Entries in a Life and Where the Sky Opens). A recipient of the Thomas Merton Prize for Poetry of the Sacred and a Pushcart nominee for poetry as well as prose, she lives on the brow of a rural hill overlooking an ancient apple tree and mercurial woodland pond. For the first time in thirty-four years, small green apples festoon the limbs. It feels like a sign . . .