Where does the snowplow
begin its removal?
We pretty much know when
it begins--after the snow
takes a break in its fury
and the road needs clearing
so we may proceed on our way.
But where? At what point
in the snowplow's journey
do you engage the hydraulics
to lower the moldboard
and create the age-old scraping noise
we eagerly anticipate in a big storm
in order to move on down the road?
Is it straight out of the unlocked gate,
like making an appointment
with a college counsellor
on the first day of orientation
after parents, glad to be done with it all,
leave you to arrange your belongings
all alone with a strange roommate?
Or is it when you get to a major thoroughfare
like after graduation and you have no idea
what you're supposed to do now
that there's no schedule to move through
(or rebel against), no demands or expectations
clamoring to be met, other than your own.
Is that the moment of clearing the piled-up snow?
Maybe it's just obvious where to begin
like when you hold your first child
and realize you don't want to be
the same parent you had but also realize
you don't have a positive vision
of what a good parent is and want one
to avoid their icy slip-ups.
Wherever it begins, the snow's end must go,
sometimes to pile up dungy gray
by the roadside, sometimes to require
another shoveling of piles from one end
of the parking lot to another
until the sun eventually melts all away
and life can freely flow.