The Winter Wind

 

I remember a taxi in Finland in late February . A friend said: “That’s a taxi for dead people.”

It was snowing hard. The cab that pulled up was a Russian “make”. My pal (for all bystanders in fierce snow after the buses have stopped are “pals”) wouldn’t ride in a Soviet automobile.

I got in the thing. So what? I got home. I talked to the driver who had two children. He was hoping they would go to college. We talked about poetry. He loved the Finnish poet Lauri Viita who wrote a famous poem about being buried alive in winter.

I was glad for that ride on what was otherwise a gloomy evening.

Tonight snow is falling in Iowa.

Lights blaze in the houses.

The people take off their wristwatches and put them aside.

A father tries to explain algorithms to his daughter.

My neighbor puts her kids to bed then talks on the phone to her cousin who has breast cancer.

Neighbors three houses down are discussing the coming layoffs. Who will keep his job?

The snow is present and ancient as always. It has no heart and it asks for none.

You can hear trucks far off on the interstate.

The nation used to glide on servility. Now it moves in terror.

The governor of Louisiana appears on the nation’s TV screens and his eyes wander as he talks about the failings of government. He tries to sell the public on the idea that their ruling classes are friendly.

The local university is discussing the furlough of its employees–this in an era when the nation needs educational programs more than ever.

Americans are unfamiliar with the concept of neighborhoods. Neighborly feeling is in part what got us through the great depression. Can we “make it” on suburbanly feeling?

The snow is coming down and the houses are glowing where people are still up and watching E.R.

 

 

S.K.