in the post-equinox storms, the town’s mask slips into another version of the what-I-see. Visitors stand mute in doorways, pressed back from the hiss and sudden street mists but it’s all calm here in my cracked-leather cabin. I’ve hours looming all to myself at the empty apartment, paramour pages waiting to carry me back out on the Murmansk run with Captain Harinxma, dreaming of the light above the Arctic Circle line, wondering how he’ll survive. I wait for the town picture to clear and take hold, so that I might return to the books.
