On this frosting night an oldies station flickers at the threshold of reception. With an unaccustomed catch and crackle in her lucid voice, so far away . . . so far away, Carole King fades in and out. From another vector a preacher breaks through, This world is not our home, then Carole again, far off, (is this distance miles or years or is it something other?) it would be so fine to see your face at my door. As the narrow road veers north, headlights sweeping leafless woods, the trees mute beneath the quarter moon, voices fade altogether and static faintly simmers above the engine’s purr like the mingled breathing of countless sleepers sharing one room tall and wide as night, the living and the dead, so far, so close, so many souls dreaming in this dark.