Driving in the late of a summer's day,
home from the sunny side
towards the looming white,
into the solid freezing bank.

Eerie fingers of phantom white
reaching through the roadside rows of cypress
and clawing at the apprehensive cars
that run through this ghostly gauntlet.

Not far ahead more cars emerge
from snow white non-existence,
their glowing eyes soft and diffuse -
dissolving back into the bright abyss.

I carve my course through cold
blistering white wet winds
towards my home, sunk in the blizzard -
my small capsule of life, alone.

I see it materialize as I near,
as if manifested by my need.
I pull in, park, and hurriedly escape
and creep into its warm, sheltering skin.

A welcome embrace greets me as I step inside
to enter into this sacred protective shell,
to then be bathed by the toasty flow of heated air
pumped from the house's heated heart.

I drop my stuff and settle in,
and set the kettle at the task of tea,
and while it boils to spew hot white
I gaze out the window to view cold white.

Peering out, through brief moments of blue:
rare intermissions from the shroud that engulfs our existence.
Tides of bleak white rolling in:
the glacier.

It's one of those uncommon days
when you can safely stare into the sun.
It hangs there stunted - weak and dimmed,
just as a moon peering through cloud.

Yet it's still burning hot beyond our reach,
while we are wrapped in a blanket of cold -
preserved under the frigid veil,
like some great cryogenic experiment.

Days without blue, like days without sun -
like that Nordic gloom.
The world is cramped and close,
and the distance muted.

From heavy saturated air,
false rain is born.
Incessant swells of giant drops
scattered by gusts across the roof.

Soon, at the onset of early night,
I venture out, with tea steaming from my cup,
into the close world of tight wet air -
and hot wet white meets cold white wet.

It's all drenched now, beyond belief.
All things succumbed - soaked and saturated.
I step carefully onto the slick and slippery deck,
sensing the traction's loss by moss and mold and such.

And as I walk, the chill air is wet to the touch -
as though I'm wading through a hanging rain,
or swimming through some suspended sea of spittle.
And then I stop, just at the backyard's drop.

I'm standing there with torch in hand,
projecting its beam out to the secret canyon -
like a solid rod of light at my command,
writing strange patterns into the air.

And the security floodlight that's right behind me
casts my shadow levitating deep into the lost,
like some strange holographic vision
projected into a blurry three-dimensional screen.

The kind of thing where you zone out.
The kind of sight that trips your head.
Something that's somewhat less than usual,
that keeps you transfixed - in a different space.

But then it breaks, and I retreat
back to the calling warmth within.
What little's left of tea now barely warm,
and begging to be bathed in more.

Now inside, listening to the waves of water shed
from cypress trees, soaked sponges squeezed
onto the mossy, lichen-dabbled roof.
Another night inside...
	the glacier.