The One Where the Girl Died in Woods Close to Home

It started when a filament popped
in the lone headlight
of the snow sled,

quietly, beneath the engine’s roar
and the grind of the single-track
trundle churning snow

as the girl left late
to make it home.
The blizzard, my mother

says, buried her
back-trail and without
a light she could not find

her trace. That filament,
the fine hair finely split,
brought on a deeper night,

and with it the wind conspired.
The wind banked great drifts.
It rearranged the known world’s face.