Pandora's Collective Poetry Contest (2017)
2nd Place Winner

Driving North

The hoarfrost on the trees is a beauty
fog leaves when it is at last consumed
by cold, obscurity transformed into light,
the bright world the heart knows upon waking.
“Winter 25” - Patrick Lane

Her hands on the steering wheel, heater
broken so her breath comes out in puffs
and the windshield grows feathers of frost.
In the rear-view mirror: the baby slumped
pink-cheeked in his car-seat. Still sleeping, thank god.
A huge grader rumbles past them, spewing
road-greyed snow, and an oil-black raven
rocks crazily on a snow-heavy branch. She’s more
comfortable with coastal rain than this cold, but truly
the hoarfrost on the trees is a beauty

that takes your breath away, like when
you round the corner to the sun glittering
through a copse of brittle cottonwoods,
and the fence posts standing like pencils in the snow.
This is ranch country. Searching for radio stations,
she can’t find anything but cowboy tunes.
It was tough overnight. Headlights casting
feebly into the grey, and taking the turns
easy as she waited for the dawn. She knew
fog leaves when it is at last consumed

by the day’s light, even the weak warmth
of January’s sun, but still it was lonely.
Easier now, and she thinks of her destination,
him flinging open the cabin door, all grins,
her stomping the snow off her boots
and passing him the baby, and despite
the months apart, their little boy sitting
so right in his arms. The long drive worth it
as she takes in his face, his eyes ignited
by cold, obscurity transformed into light;

something’s changed in him, too,
and now the year’s doubts disappear like the
white hare that bounded across the headlight
beams and into the bush just past 100-Mile.
She thinks of a story her Dad used to tell,
of how outside Whitehorse, light waning,
he totaled his car, damned lucky he’s alive,
and too bad about the moose. They sit by the woodstove
drinking tea, laughing, talking, and sharing
the bright world the heart knows upon waking.

- Trudy Noort