Coming Home, December 8, 1980

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That night I traced my snowy, stunned stations
up Main Street to Maple to Fremont, saw
our windows, black, as though the light gone from
them was John's. Krista in North Dakota
for her grandmother's funeral, our two
cats, Vincent and Veronica, famished,
I turned on lamps in that silence louder
than ringing in ears after a concert.

Lying in our bed vacant by what seemed
more than half, disastrous Reagan waiting
in January's wings, I feared for our
vulnerable home, haven for a fragile
happiness, now attacked by a darkness
sharpened by the cruel beauty of the cold.