If, as easily as I lift this shovel and toss snow
to fade in light, cold wind, I could lift the bodies
of all those lost in war--babies seeking breasts,
boys too young to remember breasts, men too angry
to care--and toss them, too, over this shoulder,
into this wind, no more forgotten than they already
are. Every flake unique; every body, too. Flake
and flesh melting to water, dust, and mud and mud
and mud. Genghis Kahn stacked skulls in hills,
marked what was his. Hitler burned his in cyanide,
crematorium, shallow graves. In Iraq, tears fall
like snow where blood flows more readily than food
or laughter. Did the Kahn slide down his mountains
of skulls? Did Hitler dream of strange lethal perfumes?
I scrape the driveway--pure, clean cement. It will be
worse next time. Every snow builds its own
banks, wind breaks, like every death, every
war, every time leading to another. My
neighbor starts his snowblower--war, too, has
technologies. When he is finished, flakes are
stacked again--always shoveling to be done.
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