Poem: "A Seasoned Part of the Country"

I normally hate free verse poetry, but I forgot I wrote this and how decently written it is, theme-wise and in terms of diction, metaphors, and flow.

A Seasoned Part of the Country

by Austin Ballard

It’s a fact in anyone’s book

That iced roads can swipe an unwary tire

And direct its path to a ditch

(The place every driver dreads).

I have furrowed a disgruntled brow, too,

When the thick, heavy flakes

Pile up like bricks on a wall

To blockade my shoveled driveway once more.

And yes, even when winter is over,

The trickling, drippy brown water

May seep and soak the dead grass,

Forming flat heaps that linger to the last.

All this while we stay inside,

With wet gloves, sick of hot cocoa

And weary of making snowmen,

Bored, and longing for the color green.

Such are the common laments in this town,

And they are valid.

But yet my address stays the same, and I imagine the pitiful opposite.

In other places, to the south or southeast,

—What a pity—the children know not the color white.

Just ice in iceboxes, snow on the old T.V. screen,

And water trickling out as sweat,

With nothing but sweltering more or less to look forward to.

At least I, in my chilly basement,

Can look forward to a change greater than mere temperature:

A revolving wheel of colors, smells, and pastimes;

Rather than just dripping with sweat or pool water day in and day out.