This week’s poem, Carl Little’s “Shoveling,” was written in response to the digging out of buildings in Syria, Turkey, Ukraine and elsewhere. I love this poem’s wide-ranging meditation on the act of slipping a shovel into the ground, and on the shovel itself – its shape, and what the motion of its use evokes.

Little is the author of more than 30 art books, including monographs on Dahlov Ipcar, Eric Hopkins, William Irvine and Irene Olivieri. He and his brother David’s fourth collaboration, “The Art of Penobscot Bay,” is due out from Islandport Press in the fall. He lives and writes on Mount Desert Island.

Shoveling
By Carl Little

I’ve seen shovels slipped into earth,
my father’s foot bearing down,
even cuts around baby cryptomeria
bound for the allée he envisioned
of shaggy trees in the back meadow

and Pedro removing snow from stoop,
satisfying fill and fling, the square
head holding mounds of dirty white
he threw to the curb, handyman
called upon to clear the decks

or me digging ferns in the woods,
sharp wedge slicing roots
to free clumps of fledgling fiddles
arranged in plastic sled for transport
to the front of the house or elsewhere.

We shovel, therefore we are, as
every wielder knows, the force
through which we search the rubble
hoping to spy a piece of clothing
with breather attached, scathed but living.

This simple tool, its long arm worn
to smoothness, hands sliding up and down
as if moving earth were playing a kind
of trombone, oh when the saints come
marching in / I want to be in that number.

Epilogue:

On the radio today the sound of shovels
turns the stomach, brutal clanks as
blades strike mediocre building materials,
voices calling, people weeping,
everyone digging furiously.

Megan Grumbling is a poet and writer who lives in Portland. Deep Water: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. “Shoveling,” © 2023 by Carl Little, appears by permission of the author.

Copy the Story Link