1.

Hazard lights in the breakdown lane—

three semis stuck halfway up Searsburg Mountain,

the state trooper bending to set flares

on treacherous ice roads winding slow

East/West over the ridge

where my mother is re-learning how to knit.

Her marled stitches furl into a ribbon,

loose scarf for an imaginary child, another

project she’ll never finish. She carries

the soft cowl from room to room,

couch to chair, with the mystery

she’s been reading since August.

2.

Why aren’t the windmills turning when we pass?

They razed the ridgeline but those giant blades

stand sentinel above the riddled snowpack.

Tension is just trapped energy, the teacher says,

rubbing the knot at the nape of my neck.

I want to believe her, I breathe

into the interstices, imagine

I’d be different with a different man,

would soften like a rag beneath his grip.

3.

Out on the Meadows, the fishermen arrive

in darkness, live bait in lidded buckets.

They light the woodstove in the metal house,

bore a hole through the ice

revealing the netherworld: murky reeds

and black mud, the promise

of slow perch in cold water.

They hook a minnow below the dorsal fin

and it swims around the hole all day

tethered to an invisible line, battering

the smooth walls. The only way out

is to be consumed, the only freedom a mouth

darker and colder than this frozen river.