Valentine’s Day

Dawn Potter

The plow guy shows up four hours after the snow has stopped

and plows a rosebush.

But in the dark of the year

I don’t care about roses.

What I care about is an emergency exit to the street

so I can escape from my own toils and devices,

a hatch that he carves out for me,

after a fashion,

though it’s littered with cigarette butts

and speckles of hydraulic fluid.

When I trudge out to hand him his cash,

he doesn’t even bother

to transfer the joint to the other hand.

He smiles broadly, like a man should smile

when he’s just finished plowing the driveway

of a woman who’s rumored to write poems,

who’s ten years older than himself,

and whose son plays soccer on his daughter’s team,

where they do real good

because both kids are fast and can score, and once

they even got their names drawn from plastic pickle jars

and had to dance together at the middle-school Snow Ball.

Not that they liked it.

I feel a little sad

when the plow guy doesn’t go so far

as to offer me the joint.

It’s a disappointment,

but, in the long run,

probably for the best

since, if we did smoke a joint together—

his plaid elbow poking out of the pickup window,

me with my bare feet stuck into barn boots

and the zipper half torn out of my coat—

we might have to talk about something

like ice fishing,

or how big our skinny kids are getting,

or what the cold’s supposed to do tomorrow,

instead of just plowing and smiling, and paying,

and turning our backs

in the way citizens do

who’ve modestly eyed each other for a score of years

but won’t believe they have a life in common,

except for snow

and old clothes, and two kids

who chase a ball down a shaggy field.

Though now we share this morning’s dose of loneliness.

God forbid

that we should mention such a thing.

[forthcoming in Same Old Story (CavanKerry Press, 2012)]