Poem: "Clearing the Drive"

[ysabetwordsmith]

This is today's freebie. It was inspired by a backchannel prompt from my partner Doug. It also fills the "snow" square in my 12-1-22 card for the Wonders of Nature Bingo fest.

Warning: Do not read with mouth full.


"Clearing the Drive"
-- an Italian sonnet


A man stepped out to face the winter cold,
his dark hair tousled and his cheeks chapped red.
His snowy driveway filled his heart with dread.
He didn't own a blower -- wasn't old --
but it would take him hours to clear, all told.
He squared his shoulders then, and raised his head.
He'd clear it, even if it killed him dead.
He picked his shovel up and took his hold.

He panted from his work, but it was done:
the driveway clear, the snow a mounded row.
Across the street laughed children in the sun --
their drive laid bare, swept clean for winds to blow.
They'd done a morning's work, had breath to run ...
... and done it all to build a man of snow.

Comments

[siliconshaman]

and then the snow plough came, and refilled it all.

Well ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

That's why we wait until after it passes.

[kengr]

I recall the year of the insane snows. About halfway thru, the piles of snow at the sides of the driveway were 5 or 6 feet tall. And the bases had spread to the point where they were encroaching on the driveway.

So we had to go and *move* the heaps farther away. So we wound up shoveling some snow 3 times by the time stuff started to melt.

That was also the year of icicles that not only reached to the ground, but were wrist thick or thicker by the time they got there. Dangerous game was running in, hitting them hard enough to break them and running out before the falling pieces could nail you.

I was not allowed to make money by shoveling roofs (the build-ups were bad enough to make that *necessary* on many houses. But a number of my friends were doing it.