Plowing

It’s a loud business, to the untrained
ear. And so much snow, it’s hard to imagine
a road ever existed here. Even the truck,
tire-chained, back-weighted by a full bed of sand,
can’t hold its corners, entering the sliplace
of crusted pasture, even once disarraying
someone’s spring-stacked heap of burn wood.
And as the plow’s grunt dislodges
a buried walkway’s in-ground light,
we’re pitched so hard against the dash
my watch’s crown cuts in my wrist a perfect hole.
My brother in his undershirt climbs through the window
to dig wheel from bank with a small shovel.
When he holds his sustained weight
against the bumper, I’m to turn the wheel,
clutch, give a little gas. Those of us who wait
for the quiet after the storm, may wait.

Brittany Perham
“Plowing” is from The Curiosities (Parlor Press, 2012).