Stoneboat

Our hospital conversation
turns to snow and bitter cold,
how it is the same this year
as when we walked to school,
snow way up over our galoshes,
how it made those red rings
where leg and boot came together.

He remembers snowbound days,
our impassible driveway when
he and Dad had to set the milk cans
on the stoneboat and pull them up the road
for pickup by the milkman, Rufus Palmbach.
He says they always got them up there.

What is this Sisyphean task
before him now at Christmastime,
these blinking monitors,
this heart they say is out of step?

I want him back there shoving the stoneboat,
caught in the steam of his own breath,
laughing, shouting, boasting, and knowing
that he can always make it up to the road.