Cold Front
Dec 28 2009


The plough came early
most of the world asleep,
high-beams bleaching the pristine surface,
hazard light blinking
like a Martian lander,
electric blue.

The shiny steel blade
breaks the deep cold stillness,
carves a wave of snow
peeling smoothly off
in its wake.
It rumbles
over asphalt,
clatters
over frozen gravel,
groans and scrapes
over hard concrete roads.
And the diesels, thrumming
belching smoke.

We hear it, half awake
through triple-pane glass
bolted doors,
the ghostly light invading our bedrooms
swivelling swiftly past.

The midnight world
of muffled whiteness
wind-sculpted curves,
ditches filled
fenced buried
roads and fields blurred,
is now neat, geometric
— order conferred.
The grid emerges
between steep snowbanks
and scoured streets
scarred by sand,
that will turn into wet grey slush
come rush hour.

At 4 am, my footprints were all that marred
the untouched surface
perfectly preserved,
like the fossilized tracks
of a long extinct animal,
pacing restlessly, aimlessly
unable to sleep,
caught
in a maelstrom of thought,
quashed
by the weight of feeling.

But the snowplough came, and went
obliterating every evidence
of my existence, then,
between the end of the storm
and the lighter grey
of morning.