I am six, and sick with one of those
childhood things. My father is away, frozen
in some other city; my mother, out of patience,
has taken me into the bed for the night.

The dark hours and snowy inches of February
multiply with the Swiss movement of the clock.
By the labored grinding of the snowplow,
many houses over, I practice a sort of
sleepless cartography, tracing the new streets
that appear, peopling them with sleepers.

The plow rounds our street corner, a great
Moses-machine, throwing up white waves
to the right and left, snorting and tossing
and goring the tarry road bed. Then it's gone.

In the dark, my fever burns like the moon.