I’ve been down the long highway to La Scie
when it’s walled by snow so high
the great yellow grader needs a bucket with holes
so the snow won’t stop it dead

When snow piles around the plant
not like a blanket but like a berm of earth
laid round a Roman encampment for protection
and boats sit in ice so thick the moon cannot shift them.

Above us the broken granite towers,
peering down on this settled plain that was
once a valley scraped by glaciers