WHITEOUT

Honey mushrooms glow in the dark;

in a sweat, a journalist wakes

to a roadside bomb; when a woman

outside a bakery offers to wash

your car windshield, you give her

some cash, and what will suffice?

Cottonwood seeds swirl in the air;

in Medellín, your host invites you

to lunch at his house; you sip

potato and cilantro soup, glance

at a door open to an enclosed yard

with a hammock and mango tree,

the space a refuge inside bullet-

pocked walls. A narwhal pokes

its tusk through ice into the air;

it exhales: whiteout: how to live,

where to go: in the yard, you hear

a circular saw rip the length of a plank.