He is big, broad, and mightily whiskered.
If you didn’t know, you would find him
scary. There’s a certain glint in his eye
and his gaze -- unflinching.
Through the dark of night, in often bitter cold,
he sculpts the drifts of icy white, bending their
mountains to his will, leaving clean-scraped
furrows in his wake so that upon the break of
day, us townies can go out about our business.
But beneath the heavy canvas, flannel, muscle,
and chowdah there lies buried a writer’s heart.
It is when he is surrounded by the grinding
crash of gears, the straining engine, the WHUMP
of the blade hitting frozen ground, the growl
of the truck and sometimes the man himself
as they strain and heave the snowbanks forward...
it is then, from out of the cacophony that fills
the fogged and frosted cab that the words push
out, that adventure is born, that an angry man
strides forth, that a sweating man shovels coal
at a furious pace, that a reaching hand grasps
a metal doorknob and pulls back, burnt.
His words take you always just to the edge of a cliff,
leave you hanging, thirsting for the rest of the story.
There you must teeter until snow falls again. Aye, but
here’s the rub. Not just any snow will do...there must
be snow enough to plow.