You learn this early:
at night when you are
driving in a whiteout storm,
you keep your headlights 
low, focused on what’s
directly before you,
the next three yards of road.

If you turn them up,
put on the high beams,
the whiteness becomes
a blinding tunnel and 
whatever lurks ahead becomes
obscure and potentially
hazardous, if not Death itself.

You learn early that
staying safe in the whiteness
is best served by finding
a solid warm home where
you can sleep safely, have as many
or as few lights on as you want:
all you desire or need in full view.

When you wake and have to leave the house
(you will have to wake and leave the house)
you do it in full daylight. Do it
when you can see all the whiteness
for what it is. Everywhere,
the shroud and cold smother.
Hazards clear. Death, obviously there

but in plain view,
easier to fend off
and avoid for now,
if not forever; as time passes,
a promise rising in the air
that somehow,
all of this will be temporary.