Shovel: a poem
Shovel
Used to shovel snow
With my brother and mom
Arlington, Massachusetts
Winters, 1986–1998
Dad shoveled the snow
At his house.
No shoveling snow
In El Cerrito, California
But today I use a shovel
To dig up weeds and unearth
The flagstones, one or two inches thick
Originally placed in 1922 or 1951 or 1984
Where the sidewalk meets the street
An ugly rectangular strip
Thick and spiky weeds with tough roots.
I’ve been pushing the lawnmower
For years, a game of trim and grow
but we’ll finally cover it with concrete
Maybe this month even
First it was me with the shovel
Listening to October baseball
Sweating and with thirsty throat
Convincing myself to keep going
Not enough sweating with my body
Too much sweating in my mind
Stepping on the shovel, coaxing it down
Into the crusty dry former dirt
Hauling up heavy stones
Carrying them to the side
Of the narrow driveway
Extending the width with stone puzzle
To keep car from laying lopsided
Uneven dried grass meets driveway concrete
The ever-titling Earth
The slope of the hillside
The warrior weeds that return
Here I am: an hour or two at a time
One creature with a shovel
The crow inspectors arrived later
Wondering if any new possibilities
Made their way up out of the ground
But no worms or insects were to be found.
***
For more of my poems, check out Sun Capture.
