buzzed by snowmobiles

Our daughter called them bumblebees,
powerful machines made to
move through snow,
droning along the ditches and
frozen rivers, manned by
heavy-headed helmets, bobbing
behind tiny windshields.

A string of them would pass,
thrumming in individual arcs of sound
that gathered in consequence.
Headlights beamed in the
advancing dusk, bouncing wildly
off the moon-blue snow, one-eyed,
leaving tracks like links in a chain.

I would hold her up to the window as
we watched the sleek things,
their rounded blly engines whirring,
turn through a hidden break in the trees,
a secret seam to the anterior,
sun setting in the woods like
champagne punch. Stark. Effervescent.

© Tori Grant Welhouse