He Used Tools, and Left These Traces

I think of this as a two-shear bolt and bent-blower day
but, of course, it is still snowing: there may be more.

The city has not yet come through and buried our driveway
with snow they have to put somewhere. The truth is
that the drivers try hard not to fill our driveways,
but with a foot, or a foot-and-a-half of new snow,
they have their own problems.

I think of today as the day when I may go to jail
for attacking the first person who smiles and says
how nice it is to have all that dirty snow covered up.
New snow as a way to get rid of old snow is insanity.

I am prepared to allow only septuagenarians
who shovel their own snow to say right out loud
how much they love the seasons, else I shall pay
the city snow plow driver to plow their driveway full.
I am, at the moment, not interested in colored leaves,
or catching sunfish at the lake. There is not a shred
of evidence that grass will green again, or even exists.

Winter soup is nourishing, but it is not comfort.
It is no match for what I barely recall having grilled
on the back deck, before Canada moved south.
Our grill is a barely perceptible lump in the snow.
Propane is a laughing gas. Charcoal is a stratum in the ice.

"Here," paleontologists will say, "they built campfires.
They ate clams, and there are flintmarks on these ribs.
They might have intermarried with Innuits, or have
been carried away in a rolling surge of city snow plows."

I know that I was a tool user, a shear bolt installer,
and a lamenter of bent snow blower blades,
but there will probably be no trace; no memory.

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