daily route

"daily route" comes out of my experience delivering mail in the Christmas break from university, in 1957 (I think, although it might have been 1956). This was in Kirkland Lake, Ontario, my home town, in a very cold corner of Nothern Ontario. The temperature in the week or so that I did the job never rose above -34F, and the wind on that exposed side of town was pretty high most of the time; I suppose the windchill was often -60F. Don't worry; I was dressed for it. I was assigned the "Federal" walk, a friendly but thinly travelled region, where I seldom saw anyone outdoors. I walked down many paths and shortcuts upon which I my boots imprinted their distinctive treadmarks, which were almost never trod over by anyone else. I began to see that I was retracing my own footprints every day, and soon saw it as a metaphor for a life that has no possibilities but repetition. Over the years since then, I have thought of that experience often, until it has become one of my life stories. It's not that I hated or depaired of the job: I only did it for about ten days; but there were moments when I saw the possibilities, and they have grown into understanding.

I chose the sonnet form for several reasons: first, I thought that the theme required a disciplined predictable form to reflect the subject matter; second, I write iambic pentameter rather easily; third, the sonnet fell into a Shakespearian pattern because it is not a poem about metamorphosis, as an octave and sestet pretty well requires, but rather a poem about a situation that obtains, with a conclusion that I made hopeful in the couplet, rather than keeping the atmosphere as a total downer.