Battered along the road

“It’s a motley lot. A few still stand

at attention like sentries at the ends

of their driveways, but more lean

askance as if they’d just received a blow

to the head, and in fact they’ve received

many, all winter, from jets of wet snow

shooting off the curved, tapered blade

of the plow….’’

— From “Mailboxes in Late Winter,’’ by Jeffrey Harrison, a Dover, Mass., poet and teacher.