Snow Man

One night when we still lived out on the farm
and it was blowing snow and very cold
my father went out, stiffly bundled up
to do his carman job on the railroad,
looking like a snow man as he trudged
to crank the starter on his beat-up Ford,

and many of my memories are of him
heading out the door to work his shift,
first at the freight yard, then the factory,
the jobs he never talked about at home.
He didn’t say a lot, in general,
so I don’t know what kind of hopes he’d had

when he was young, and he remains to me
a man seen from behind, vanishing through
a numbered gate into the smoke and noise,
one of many, walking silently
to some workbench or station on a line,
leaving any stillborn dreams behind.

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David Stephenson is a retired manufacturing engineer, and the editor of Pulsebeat Poetry Journal. He has published poetry three collections: Rhythm and Blues, which won the Richard Wilbur Award, Wall of Sound, and Secret Dance. He is also co-author of Metal Cutting Theory and Practice, an engineering reference work. He lives in Detroit with his wife, the chemist Maria Clelia Milletti, and their cat, Lester.