Winter Driveway
March 12 2015

Snow accumulates
over a long winter

on our rattle-trap drive,

until you realize

how high above the ground

the hard-packed snow has grown,

layer-by-layer

each pass of the plough.

Evening out

washboard and potholes,
submerging the endless rocks
that poke-up, in an annual crop
from bottomless earth.

The same way glaciers are made;
time, incrementally working,
turning dustings of snow
to a mountain of ice.

But come spring
the immaculate surface
is reduced to slush and mud, a morass of ruts
that make the long steep drive
impassable.
Like most things, it seems
a zero sum game;
what we gain in winter, we pay in spring
when a quick thaw
can cut us off for weeks.

Which is justice, I suppose,
because living so far off the road
was a great attraction for me;
the sense of detachment, the glorious peace,
the foolish illusion

of self-sufficiency

in which I indulged.

Stranded cars
in the frozen gumbo
of our poorly drained drive,
spinning their wheels
digging-in
deeper and deeper.
While we slog along
with backpacks and gumboots,

heading for home

in the frigid dark.

I rather like the sort of merciless symmetry here: the zero-sum game; the rough justice of my self-serving illusions. But the poem wasn't written to send a message. I really just wanted to write about this treacherous driveway, giving and taking away. And -- like another favourite "g" word, gobsmacked -- any time I can get gumboots and gumbo into a poem it's well worth writing!