Overnight, an inch of snow.
Scant and dry, the only fall
in Nashville’s winter demands
all of Katie’s attention
to finish one small
totem of snow.
The two-foot man
quiets the shrubs
with his upraised stick arms
and surveys the white grassy domain
with the darkest of acorn eyes.
He is the tallest idol
in the neighborhood, holding
court long after warmth
has returned the lawn
to its dull yellow and flat
wallpaper green.
The last to go,
Katie’s snowman lies down
to stare up at the stars,
his outstretched tiny limbs
directing this night’s movement
of the high thin clouds.
Raised in a milltown on Lake Michigan in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, John Peter Beck is a recently retired professor in the labor education program at Michigan State University where he still co-directs a program that focuses on labor history and the culture of the workplace, Our Daily Work/Our Daily Lives. His poetry has been published in a number of journals including Another Chicago Magazine, The Louisville Review, Passages North, and The Seattle Review among others.
