Ode to the Plow Man

When the winter time comes, it brings with it, the snow. White, light, and fluffy, or damp and heavy, it blankets everything as it falls to earth in below freezing temperatures. Evenly coating tree branches, evergreen needles, rooftops, hillsides, and of course, the roads.  

When the snow comes, school children gaze out their windows, hoping that it might be enough to incapacitate society. They eagerly hope to wake in the morning and see their districts name scroll across the listing banner of their local weather station. The realistic child though, knows that they have a tough opponent in this cause. Men, who have made their livelihoods in the prevention of this lethargic child’s wintertime wish. 

The Plow Man is a simple man. His paycheck is adequate, his living is a reserved one. He maintains the comforts that any decent fellow of his society is entitled to. Beyond these though, he does not often exceed in possession, indulgence, or want. Unlike many of us however, the Plow Man has a well defined purpose in our society. He wakes before the dawn, and goes to work, plowing the roads of snow. He knows what the world wants from him, and he goes to his task with a purpose that can only be the result of a real urgency and need for its completion.

He clears a route for the rest of us. Before he arrives, the landscape is untouched by the hand of man. To the Plow Man, the road is hidden underneath a canvas of nature’s wonder. While we sleep he goes to work, peeling back the blanket that lays over the world. Carving the veins by which the blood of our people may course through these lands. He wouldn’t put it that way. He’s not a poet, but what he does is filled with poetry. 

Ode to the Plow Man, who rises up while we lay resting, to lay down a path, that the rest of us may traverse in our meager existence. Trail blazer. We are mere sheep following your wake. Without you we would be naught but limbs and struggling shovels. But with you, we are free.  

-J