Snow Fall
Post operatively
he is unable to drive
when suddenly snow fills the street.
It’s only ten minutes to walk
back home. ‘Not in these shoes,’
he says, ‘not in this jacket.’
Why I agree I don’t know
for the snow makes a toy of the wheel
in my hands. Tyres flounder.
‘Honestly, you’ll be fine,’ he says,
‘if you just go straight ahead
uphill, fine if you just
take it steady, fine
once you reach the main road,’
he says.
‘Now take a left,’ he says,
‘and drive in the tracks of the traffic.’
— all down another terrible hill
where I crack
and cry and swing the wheel
to the kerb,
slew the car
across somebody’s drive
and we walk
down to a van
resting nose to gentle nose
with the 83 bus. Up in his cab
the driver is sitting it out.
Jenny Hockey is a Sheffield poet and former academic. In 2013 New Writing North awarded her a New Poets Bursary. After magazine and anthology publications since 1985, Oversteps Books published her collection, Going to bed with the moon in 2019. jennyhockeypoetry.co.uk