Why I Keep Shoveling the Cursed Driveway

Cars waver down the glassy streets,
somebody in a pickup scrapes the parking lot.
Nobody trusts anybody to stop for the signs.
Every cough, mine or yours, might tip us off
the edge of the world. Still, geese rattle over
in their honky skeins, and the mallards
paddle sweetly on the quarry, clump down
the frozen creek. The famous white duck
with the bad wing is fatter than ever.
I shoveled my long driveway twice, grumpy,
leaving scraps of snow like words snapped free
from a broken sonnet. This will all melt,
I kept thinking, even as I kept pushing snow.