For my father in ICU

It’s early morning the day before Thanksgiving.

There came about 8 more inches of snow
overnight.

There’s almost an expectant hush, as if
something more than dawn lies over the horizon.

Although there’s no moon, it’s luminous.

Starlight shimmers off the heavy drifts, painting broad
glowing brushstrokes over sleeping yards.

Each bared branch and branchlet draped in layers, white
satin evening wraps about to slip off shoulders to
the floor, if the trees should shrug — all on the verge
of melting so that the wet, black boughs knit
remaining darkness against the light to give some
shape to what we see.

Like you beneath your
blankets and limned in glow of monitors.

The squirrels are dreaming in their nests.

No one stirs
yet.

The whole landscape is clean, untracked, and
the quiet is so heavy as to hush the echoes of
occasional cars in the wet streets a few blocks
over, or the whispered conversations of oxygen
and IV drips.

One can almost forget the year, that
machines and lights are an ordinary part of
everyday life,

that industry has ever passed this
way, that the various tubes going in and out of you
are not your branches dreaming of spring buds
and waiting to leaf, or that we conspire
to continue. It’s quite
beautiful.

And I’m thinking of you. And when you
come home, healing, you can know this, too.

Artistic Work credited to K Funk.