Clearing Ice
Mammoth cold this morning.
There’s been an ice-storm.
Stiff-meat meets chilled ribs,
I am creaking and walking
shovel in shrinking hand.
Robins pounce on frozen worms
Siberian tigers in a flying flurry;
if they stop for a moment
death and life falls over everywhere.
I work the wide-plastic spade
its red mouth scooping
a deep glacial gravity,
pausing only to sag
under the wind's frigid whips,
An old guy shoveling snow
can have heart failure,
better to go this way though
than sitting on the toilet.
Mammoths are now snow piles,
broken branches protrude like tusks.
I lean on my shovel,
watch the robins
shake off crystals of sky
from heat-hugging wings.
See how hectic they fly?
Some may fall by evening;
in this kind of freeze
death and life falls over
everywhere.
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