Deceptive Landscape

Of all the happy accidents
to fall and dislocate a shoulder
slipping on the trodden ice
with a sudden wetness, cries
for help, and hospital we happened
to be wanting anyway...

Banked cumulus or snowy ranges
had shaded into sky, a whiteness
from which knife-edge strata
jutted like a Christmas
present and, overnight, changes
were promised us for later.

How snow, from a distance,
had deceived in broad daylight
this familiar wounded soldier
...