Driving my Parents Home at Christmas

As I drive my parents home through the snow

their frailty hesitates on the edge of a mountainside.

I call over the cliff

only snow answers.

They talk quietly

of hauling water of eating an orange

of a grandchild's photograph left behind last night.

When they open the door of their house they disappear.

And the oak when it falls in the forest who hears it through miles and miles of silence?

They sit so close to each other; as if pressed together by the snow.