They lie side by side
under a thick quilt of silence.
The air silts up with snow.
The drifting land
merges with the inside room
gradually through the window
and the white sheet
swells and furrows
in the wind: no things
in this deep sleep are solid
only perhaps this floating
bed which holds them up, a life-
raft where they weather seas
that undulate with danger.
Under the bed the dust
eddies and collects;
dead leaves, broken
twigs, water-sodden
bones of small
animals gather
like sediment on the seafloor
under the snow.
Outside, the land
is filled with drowning men
and stretched remote close
beside her
he foundered and went down
some time before she knew.