My mother taught me 

to shovel snow

the way I imagine

some mothers teach prayer –

patient, shoulder to shoulder.

She’d come home from a long day,

and say: Come on, let’s go.

Out into the dark we went,

into the hush of the world,

the night itself an altar.

We cleared our own driveway,

then the neighbor’s.

I was small,

and my mother said:

I know it’s heavy,

just lift what you can.

She was teaching responsibility,

but I was learning goodness –

that it’s a creature

kept alive with small offerings.

I learned early

that often the work worth doing

is the work no one sees.

Sometimes, the snow fell faster

than we could move it.

By the time we reached

the end of one driveway,

the sky had covered our tracks,

our labour swallowed whole.

Just lift what you can.

Those nights taught me

how a life is built –

one small clearing,

one small mercy at a time.

Just lift what you can.

And I tried to pass it on

to my own children.

This steady belief

that you lift what you can,

when the snow keeps falling.

When the world is heavy.

When I die,

and the cruelty of the world 

outlives me,

as I suspect it will,

I hope you’ll believe me

when I say

I did my best

to lift what I can.

I lifted it again and again,

even as the snow fell.

I always remembered

my mother’s lesson:

the power of small, good things.

That if I just lift what I can,

it will show me

how to live

in this heart and soul-breaking world.

She isn’t here to see it,

how it breaks my heart every day now.

How I take my spirit outside

into the cold,

away from the day’s cruelties,

to shovel the driveway:

a protest

against the weight of the world.

I think of her then.

I think

who knows what we will become,

but I know this: 

my mother never once stood

in protest against anything.

She didn’t raise her voice.

But she raised me

like a sign. 

Her greatest protest.

An unending march.

Say I was taught by my mother.

Say we took good care

of our home,

and we took good care

of our neighbours.

Say she taught me to clear a path

between strangers.

That it made a difference

briefly.

And when the world is too much,

I’ll tell you what my mother said to me.

I know it’s heavy,

just lift what you can.