George Bilgere

Snow

A heavy snow, and men my age
      all over the city
are having heart attacks in their driveways,

dropping their nice new shovels
      with the ergonomic handles
that finally did them no good.

Gray-headed men who meant no harm,
     who abided by the rules and worked hard
for modest rewards, are slipping

softly from their mortgages,
     falling out of their marriages.
How gracefully they swoon—

that lovely, old-fashioned word—
      from grandkids, pension plans,
winters in Florida.

They should have known better
      than to shovel snow at their age.
If only they’d heeded

the sensible advice of their wives
      and hired a snow removal service.
But there’s more to life

than merely being sensible. Sometimes
      a man must take up his shovel
and head out alone into the snow.

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George Bilgere's latest book, Haywire, won the May Swenson Poetry Award in 2006, and he received the Ohioana Poetry Award in 2007. He lives in Cleveland, Ohio, and teaches at John Carroll University.