Giveth & Taketh (how to love winter but probably not)

With the first real snowfall here in Upstate New York and the likelihood that a lot of traditional once-taken-for-granted holiday and winter activities will be skipped or limited this year, I decided to dust off this poem about perspective:

As the light descends,

a lumination seemingly independent of any celestial orb,

pink and dying, numinous, tangible particles of dusk in the terse air,

my visible exhalations providing certitude of existence, however temporary,

however contingent upon the numbing of my toes,

soothing scrape of the snow shovel along the neighbor’s walkway,

each glimmering pile, excavated at the cadence of fraternity, at the rhythm

of my beating heart, my panting transcendence

and then to stop

just completely and authentically

stop

in the darkening still, some Frostian hushed reality

and gaze upon a city avenue that’s seen

over a century of snow shovel solidarity

under old-fashioned street lights

sighing

in one of those idiosyncratic instants when we see beyond the Veil of Maya,

actually feel the warmth of life.

In the morning late for work with myself to blame

- spent too much time scribbling nonsense about winter twilights -

my car gets stuck in the plowman’s heap at the end of the driveway the son-of-a-bitch

this stupid snow in this hellhole city this fucking weather,

my slamming door, my revving tantrum, my vocabulary lesson to the ice and wind…

As the morning light ascends

I look forward to spring

and beautiful things.

(part of the 2020 Repost Project)