Beaten Down
Feb 1 2024
So long since it snowed,
and the world looks like an aging man
who's lived too long alone,
stopped taking care of himself
because why bother?
Outside, the snow is grimy
and beaten down,
bare spots
have exposed asphalt
stained with salt,
dead grass
leached of chlorophyll.
The low banks
where the sun hits
are granular and pitted.
While he looks pale and worn,
has bad teeth
a patchy beard
mismatched clothes.
His walk is stooped
and something smells off,
a mustiness
mixed with body odour.
It's gotten easy to ignore
the soiled sheets
unmade bed
sink of dirty dishes.
There are icy bits
from freeze and thaw
where the unwary walker will slip and fall.
While he heats canned soup
in an unwashed pan
on a 2-burner hotplate encrusted with spills;
which, more often than not
he lets grow cold
when the memories come over him.
The snow cover
thin to start
has been compacted even more,
so the frost
has worked itself deeper,
freezing pipes
and causing the soil to heave.
While a sadness
he doesn't understand
is slowly sapping his soul;
nothing matters anymore,
does anyone really care?
Perhaps a winter storm
will set things right.
Conceal the sins of the world
in a mantle of white,
and allow the warmth
at the planet's core
to percolate up.
Because any change would be restorative.
Even the possibility
give a measure of hope.
I had no idea where this poem was going — if anywhere — when I set down the first line. But when the tired landscape made me picture a grizzled old man who looks pale and worn and has neglected himself, the analogy committed me to that direction. And as I kept working the analogy (or, if you prefer, was trapped by it), I felt he poem needed to end offering a measure of redemption.
Since I'm a man of a certain age who has long lived alone, this might easily be mistaken for autobiography. Elements of truth, perhaps; but hardly that! I think, on rereading, that the poem actually speaks more to PTSD than it does to solitude or the perils of bachelorhood.
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