SHOVELERS

Snow falls steadily as years. The city sounds like shovels on cement. Breath rises everywhere; there are no roof rakes to be had. Plows push drifts into driveways and mailboxes are toppled and crunched. The shovelers will never manage. I walk the city and watch them work. Snow falls on their shoulders and follows them down the streets.

My mother’s things are left: books and letters, chairs. The box of birthday cards to send. Blouses and bracelets, unlabeled photographs. Flowered sheets, German crystal, the quilt cut out and pinned. The silver, the Hummels, a shoebox filled with Mexican bells. A basket of my father’s shirts to mend.