Removing the Dross
Removing the Dross
by Thomas Moore
After snowstorms my father
shoveled the driveway where it lay
open to a sweep of wind across
a neighbor’s field, where the snow
drifted half way down to the paved
road, before snow-blowers, before
pick-ups cruised the streets with
THE BOSS lettered on red plows.
He heated the flat shovel
in the woodstove till the blade
steamed, like Vulcan at his furnace
removing the dross, then rubbed
a hissing candle on the steel
so the snow would slide unchecked
as he made each toss. He marked
blocks with the waxed blade, lifted
and tossed, lifted and tossed again,
squaring off against the snow.
Thomas Moore explores his universe in a reality of psychic
sorry sightings with an arrangement of words to engage our
own sensitive reality during months of white in a parental
storm there is still in loss,a light to be seen from a father’s clearing out the dross.