Drafting - Dec 31 2024

 

Drafting

Dec 31 2024

Behind the plow

I see nothing of the dark forbidding night,

blinded

by the small nimbus of light

we travel in,

a stately procession of two

on a road buried in snow.

My headlamps

reveal a great yellow machine

of steel girders struts and beams

laddered together

with heavy-duty welds,

looking more insect-like

than technological.

Light up its massive wheels,

turning unstoppably

as the machine churns steadily ahead.

Their deep zig-zag treads

grip infallibly,

digging-in

under its brobdingnabian mass.

And illuminate the cab

perched high overhead,

its scuffed and battered plexiglass

too steamed-up

to tell if anyone’s even there

at the controls.

The reflective steel blade

flashes back at me

as it rumbles over the pavement,

groaning and screeching

and scraping it clear.

While I follow impatiently.

Because the plow is steady, but slow

and it’s easy to stray too close.

The flashing blue light

fills the car

with a ghostly glow.

The stink of diesel exhaust

leaks through the vents.

And as the dogged engine

grinds grunts and groans,

two high walls of snow

turn out on either side

with smoothly hypnotic precision;

like seeing the Red Sea part

in real time.

It’s after the storm

at 5 in the morning

and long before dawn.

No one is out

but us;

the plow, carving implacably away,

and me

riding in its wake.

I’m a cleaner fish drafting a whale,

who moves unflaggingly

with a flick of its tail

and couldn’t care less that I’m there.

Tempting, on the eve of a new year, to write about the horrible year about to pass, with a worse one to come. Trump, climate change, war, extremism — for a start — if you feel I need to elaborate.

So when a little snow started to sprinkle down and out of the blue this image came to me, I eagerly pursued it.

A poem that rests on mood, setting, and description. Nothing personal, confessional, political, or profound. So perhaps not as engaging as something more emotional and universal would be. Which means it depends on the strength of the imagery. Especially for those less familiar with real winters!

So, will the reader stay to the end, or give up on it? Will it invite rereading? Will revisiting this poem reveal anything new?