[Marion Shore]

Snow Blind

A gust of wind rocks his rig; he grits
his teeth and grinds down to a slower gear.
Snow slides like smoke across the - Deer!
He’ll hit them if they don’t move… Idiots.
He sags. They’re gone, swallowed into grey.
The pavement’s going next. Grim-faced, he steers
around storm-eaten holes. The world smears,
but he can’t stop. He’s going home to stay.

They find him parked beside the door, and wheel him,
unwilling, to his room. He drags his feet,
mumbles mad protest. His wife. She’s wait-
“She’s here,” they soothe; he knows they’re wrong. That woman,
she’s old! He waits his chance to sneak past the alarm.
He has to go. She’s waiting for him through the storm.



This poem has an almost cinematic quality for me. We're pulled right in by the dramatic opening, the vivid images, the sense of movement, and perhaps most strikingly, the poet's use of point-of-view. We see through the driver's eyes, the snow, the deer, the gray, the pavement, the way the world smears… In L8, "he's going home to stay” works on two levels – "going home" = death which seems the likely outcome of this crash, or, literally going home, which prefigures what's to come in the sestet.

When the scene shifts, he is "parked" beside the door – for all we know at this point he's still in his rig – but we soon find out he's in a different sort of vehicle – a wheelchair, in a hospital. So we realize he has survived the crash after all, and is waiting to see his wife. Then comes the shocker – we see, still through his eyes, the woman they assure him is his wife – but he knows they're wrong – "she's old!" And then it hits us, over all these years, in his mind, he is still trying to get through the storm and go home.

The dramatic dénouement of the poem is enhanced by the direct, simple diction, and the startling off– rhymes: grits/idiots, wheel him/woman. In L11, I had a problem with "wait–" – the breaking off of "waiting" sounds awkward to me. Perhaps "she waits," which would be echoed nicely by "she's here," in the next line.

While you wouldn't want a perfectly smooth meter in this poem, I found some of the irregularities jarring. In L3 – how about "like smoke across the windshield – Deer!" In L7 – how about "the whole world smears…" Also, the meter of the couplet needs to be smoothed out.

It needs some tightening, but overall I find the poem striking and powerful.




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