Snowman
I roll my Sisyphean rock as it grows again,
its path wobbling, rippling as the ball turns on uneven edges,
a warped cartwheel gathering flaky layers like a white pelt.
Like an onion’s fragile skin, tearing, shredding,
unravelling between my fingers, the snowball collapses
back into the ground in crumbling clumps.
Forging new layers like armour, the snow sticks.
My mock, immobile parody Adam; my ersatz Eve.
My frosty Frankenstein’s creature is doomed to melt, refreeze,
shrivel, shrink, contort and wither and I am doomed
to rebuild in the next snow, to roll the rock once more ‒
to rebuild, and rebuild, some Eden. It’s in my hands.
Blair Center is a writer from Inverurie, in the North-East of Scotland. Center has had poetry published by Dreich, Leopard Arts, and The Hyacinth Review. Whether in English, Scots, or his local tongue, Doric, Center finds that themes of nature, memory, identity, and place particularly and consistently motivate his work.