The sights and sounds of this week’s poem, “Snow Plow at 3:00 am,” are ones we’re all familiar with lately. I love how poet Mike Bove conjures not just the “gruff and graceless” noise of the plow, but also the small state of grace, the fresh opening, that it leaves for us.

Bove is a faculty member at Southern Maine Community College. His book “Big Little City” was published by Moon Pie Press in 2018.

Snow Plow at 3:00 am

By Mike Bove

Snow plow at 3:00 am

arrives as sound and drives me

from bed to the window to watch

its jangled passing of orange flicker

and salty growl, scrape and clang,

voice howling push, plumes of ice

before the blade, shaking bones,

sleepless diesel beast, gruff

and graceless, yet generous

in its singular gift of passage, of

a way forward, free and clear.

Megan Grumbling is a poet and writer who lives in Portland. Deep Water: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. “Snow Plow at 3:00 am” copyright © 2020 by Mike Bove. It appears by permission of the author.