Passing Over \ April, At The Edge Of The Labrador Current

Alan:  This one’s for my father, who died April 5, 2004.

Passing Over

                        

As you lay dying, I was passing over

from the coast to Bangor and the interstate.

Fresh snow sugared the wooded hills

and a west wind gusted.

It had taken an hour, that morning,

to clear home, the car caught slantwise

across the spring-soft lane, the town

unwilling to tear its skin by plowing.

But now the road lay clean

and I was passing over, as you were,

and heading south, a weak sun

hurrying itself between dark squalls.

Nancy:  April, neither here nor there, no longer winter and not quite spring.

April, At The Edge Of The Labrador Current

2 days of T shirts

and then a night comes down

so black cold

in the sky

an insubstantial

thin fall of light

washes the north

just below

the aurora

tide grumbles on stone

cold

your skin goes taut

while you watch