SELF-PORTRAIT WITH SNOW SHOVEL

i contemplate the driveway like a grim

story problem:  so many trillion snowflakes,

so many inches per hour, so many cubic feet

of cold.  let x be january.  let x be

the sodium song of the streetlights,

cloistered like god in his hot little globe.  the winter

sucks into my toes like a fountain pen,

the ink dangerously yellow and numb.

the shovel is a silver goose, flying through the ice

of this atmosphere, and my back an old xylophone

the muscles no longer want to play.

let x need no explanation.  let x

be my wife’s car at six in the morning,

blue as a new saw blade, cutting the gloam

as she drives away—slowly—to work.