Winter Cranes, livre ebook

for Teresa, Hannah and Noah I hide behind simple things so you’ll find me; if you don’t find me, you’ll find the things, you’ll touch what my hand has touched, our hand-prints will merge. Yannis Ritsos from “The Meaning of Simplicity” Darkening • The simple joy of riding with good friends in a car coming back from a barn dance on the edge of a great lake in mid-March, driving through falling snow on blizzarding country roads, past farms, silos, cattle barns recessed in deep shadows as Stand By Me spills from the radio. But on that night our car hit black ice and skittered across the road’s slick surface like a water bug — twenty-odd yards — before coming to rest in a snowbank beside a farmer’s house. A man appeared out of the dark, walking down his laneway. He asked if anyone was hurt. Are you okay? Seeing the car was undamaged, he said he could tow it out with his tractor. I remember that night walking up the road, a hundred yards or more, in the moonless dark, without so much as a flare or a flashlight to wave down passing cars, wondering why my friends and I had survived the crash. Wondering why I was not dead.