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Man Carrying Milk Through Snow

A man is carrying
a jug of milk
home through the snow.
Walking down the alley from the store.
The snow is deep.
He is neither happy
nor unhappy.
He is
himself.
Later, he is in the kitchen
frying pork chops.
Frying four chops in a pan
for his family.
His wife and children.
Night covers the ground.

—
Robert Brickhouse has contributed poems and stories to many magazines and journals, among them Virginia Quarterly Review, Southern Poetry Review, The American Journal of Poetry, Poet Lore, Louisiana Literature, the Texas Review, Hollins Critic, Chattahoochee Review, Atlanta Review, Pleiades, and Light Quarterly. Now retired, he worked for many years as a reporter for Virginia newspapers and as a writer and editor for publications at the University of Virginia.

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