I’m on my West Side porch building a snowman
trying to celebrate the Bills clinching the division
but there are at least two confirmed deaths right now
and probably more in the coming days
so many without power, others stranded in vehicles
on impassable roads, everybody stuck in the cold
I’m also thinking about how this is my first Christmas
without my dad, how his lungs walked off the job
how my mom’s been crying
reliving his death while listening to WBEN
on the little red transistor radio
because she heard this story about a guy with COPD
trapped in his home and his oxygen is running out
when I finish my snowman, I pick up a blown off branch
and write 17 on his cold chest
I shout, “Josh Allen please save us” at the blizzard
at the power grid
at everything that makes us weep and feel unalive
then the wind hugs me a little too tightly
and I can hear snow globes all across Western New York
cracking open, how I imagine that mural on Main Street
coming to life
Josh Allen with a goat’s head stiff-arming a Green Bay player
how Josh hops off the wall and begins stiff-arming
storm clouds away from Buffalo, a warming shelter on two legs
running from Northtowns to Southtowns melting snow
delivering insulin and filling gas tanks
it’s important to believe in something
in anything, how when we’re down and out
we have to improvise to make it through any storm
it’s what we do here, we stiff-arm
until we’re right where we need to be
when I come to, I head back inside
my mom has stopped crying
and is now wearing that little red transistor radio around her neck
she looks relieved
apparently, a neighbor rescued that guy with COPD
“I’m so glad he’s gonna be okay,” she tells me as we hug
it feels like a resurrection
I head to the kitchen to brew some coffee
and when it’s ready, I don’t drink it at first
I just smell it because it makes me think of morning
how even darkness must pass, and a new day will come
how flowers always know when to bloom
how we must always remember
those flowers that won’t be able to
once I’m caffeinated, I’m outside again
surveying the wreckage when this teenager walks by the house
clutching a shovel, he points it at me like we’ve all been chosen
and says, “We gotta do what we can”
I look at Josh Allen the snowman
and it’s like he’s smiling at me, at all of us
let’s just say it doesn’t matter how many frostbitten diamonds
this Christmas blizzard drops onto our neighborhoods
because in our Buffalo hearts
there are never any downed powerlines
there’s always an electric flow of empathy
and when the going gets tough, we help each other out
mixtapes with roots that never end
because we share the same stiff-arming song:
the city of good neighbors
This poem was was inspired by wheatpaste artwork of Josh Allen (The GOAT), stiff-arming a Green Bay Packers player | Photo by Glenn Murray
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