Snow Shoveling – Photo in the Public Domain by Jeff the quiet

I prepare this morning for battle with liner gloves. I think no frostbite for me. Valiantly, I shovel my way to the mailbox, around the cars, and into the lawn as a path for the meter woman. One of my outer gloves jumps off my hand; perhaps to frolic in the newly raised banks? I coax it back to service. The liners approve. And I heave another shovelful through the air.

Midway, I stand back to assess my progress and realize I’ve made the snow fort of my adolescent dreams. Towering battlements rise here and there. They guard the castle entryway. However, white powdery missiles fly my way no longer, once directed by a cohort on to better things now. But really, what could be better than a snow fort. Then I shovel a little more reality over the embankment.

Looking back at my masterpiece of excavation, I dread the snow still overhanging my head. The many feet of it huddled in a corner of the roof over the front porch. I can hear it crying out for quarter. Yet I intend it no quarter, it must fall, all convention’s judgment flung aside. In all this play, I harbor no maudlin or nefarious secrets from that Broadway stage. Oh, Neil, how sad you could not dream harder of better days to come.