Teenage Boys in Winter - March 8 2022

 

Teenage Boys in Winter

March 8 2022

He was slight and wiry

and dressed too lightly

for cold like this.

Carried himself

with a loose-limbed swagger,

a snow shovel over one shoulder

like an immortal soldier

slouching off to war.

One after another

clearing driveways down our road.

He didn't do a great job, but was enthusiastic,

not to mention came cheap

and smiled brightly.

He reminded me of my younger self;

a budding entrepreneur,

hard working

and underpaid.

Or, in times of shortage and disaster

what some might call a profiteer,

capitalizing

on scarcity and need.

Except he was too naive

in the ways of the world

to charge what the market could bear.

I tipped him generously,

no doubt subsidizing

cigarettes and beer

and the latest release

of fashionable sneakers,

the name brand

the kids have to have,

basketball player or not.

I would have offered a good winter coat, as well

but know better than that;

teenage boys in winter

in jean jacket and shorts

no hat

impervious to cold.

After a winter of what I think may be close to a record amount of snow, it seemed a good time to write a snow shovelling poem.

I recall a previous poem about the quiet bourgeois satisfaction of both shovelling, and of having shovelled: the exhilaration of cold, as well as of hard honest grunt work; and then standing back and admiring the scouted surface and geometric edges of the showpiece driveway.

So a different take was called for. Which may be more nostalgia than reality: because it's been years since I've seen kids out with their shovels canvassing the neighbours after a big snowfall. These days, they’re more likely inside playing video games. But I still see the teenage boys and young men outside and under-dressed: whose youth renders them impervious to the cold, or who think the macho posturing makes it worth getting frozen.