Rodney Torreson: “The Snow Grants Pardon”
THE SNOW GRANTS PARDON
in each dusting
of crumpled leaf
and the brown, downed grass
splotched over ground
as front and backyard harden.
Even soul sludge you’d not
acknowledged, stowed
outside of you, is covered
with white, and gargoyles
of some grudge
you thought you’d dislodged
until wind chafed
your cheeks,
the quiet so precise it silences
each windy twist of snow
that verged on a howl.
At night, you’re almost a leaf
pressed inside the book of sleep,
as cold cracks its knuckles,
the only sound,
though you don’t hear it
or the caterwauling brakes
when some drunk, that poor steward
of steel gorged on gas, misses entirely
the road behind the house.
The ditch slides under,
and the car runs over
the garden fence. The tight-lipped
trees divulge nothing.
Gashes from tires
gouge the garden for days—
you don’t notice.
The ground’s so frozen
you can’t peel away fenceposts
till spring anyway.
Only then will you build
a new fence, when your
gaze is no longer glazed
by snow’s wanderings, leaving
only the last masks
of black ice, dead leaves
and garbles of spun mud.
Rodney Torreson’s fourth full-length collection of poetry, The Ascension of Sandy’s Drive-In, was issued by Kelsay Press in 2023. In addition, Torreson’s recent poems have appeared in American Journal of Poetry, I-70 Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Paterson Literary Review, Tar River Poetry, and Third Coast.