I spend a lot of time these days shovelling snow.
Moving it from off the narrow paths
to under a laurel oak,
or behind the lean-to,
where I keep the birch logs dry.
Occasionally, I’ll part a drift
and discover the scent of wild strawberries.
It would drive any man half-mad
trying to find them;
cowering somewhere beneath their heart-shaped leaves.
I dream about snowflakes the size of goose feathers
and how they settle on my closed eyelids
and inside the wood shelter,
smothering the contours of everything,
and I grope for air.
I will shift snow tomorrow,
as I poach the white frills of an egg,
and edit an article on hot-air ballooning in Mexico.
I’ll struggle with it until spring soaks it up and I find you,
lonely and mean in a bed of bindweed.
Alexander James Allen
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/shovelling-snow/
