“I’ve been here before, I know where it goes, it goes down” – Dessa (Mineshaft)
First snow
falls. Waiting out the days as the year falls.
My shovel, undersized measuring cup, it piles up, fast.
Hundreds of days, millions infected and
the metal blade scrapes across the asphalt, leaving a thin
membrane of snow. Praying for a fix from our hypodermic angels.
Quarantined in our driveways, our common ground just salt and ash.
And what will we have to go back to, Virginia?
the thread keeping it all together slims
to near nothing. And
yet, some lingering “if”
still itches under my ski mask. Some shitty optimism that we’ve
changed somehow, maybe just a few have come
around, as I sink my shovel into this free refill mound, a
new year, a treacherous year maybe, still a hopelessly long
few days away. This good riddance New Year’s seems the only way
we all see the world the same. I
don’t know if that’s enough. I suspect
it’s not, but it’s all we have. It’s
some tiny seed of consensus, before it all unravels sideways
again. How much further
will it go still? No vaccine will protect us from
the multiplying online fever dreams. No cure to stop us from seeing our
demons reflected in the people swinging shovels one driveway over. The origin
of this madness, planted long ago. No,
it didn’t start this year, but so much of it broke through, and so much more still closer
to the surface. My frost twice bitten hands on my shovel, not ready to
uncover it all. But that’s the resolution: not a stubborn 20 pounds, but keep our
shovels down, digging closer to some elusive truth, some bare blacktop destination.
– Scraping the Bottom © Mike Chernoff 12/30/2020
(in the style of Golden Shovel, inspired by “Mineshaft” from Dessa
From the collection Carry-out Carton Fortress
Chernoff Writing.com 