The Innisfree Poetry Journal www.innisfreepoetry.org by David Salner
Blue Morning
1.
Back arched into a khaki brush stroke, he stands upon a hunk of stone and lifts a 4-lb sledge into blue morning light. By lunch, blow after blow, he must sting deep enough into the age-hard quartz to tamp a charge. Then he will blow this rock into a breath of glittering smithereens, a veil of grit through which the sun will flare on sweat, will wince through tears.
2. Sweat brightens his ribs. The heat, the light—shifting, dizzying— reflects off the flats and angles of the stone. He feels the light burn through the mist.
He watches the hammer rise like it was rigged that way, to glide like an ascending load upon a hiss and rush of cables, a steady reeling in of yesterday until the present moment snugs against the gib, then the release, the rapid fall of everything into tomorrow, the full weight of the hours plunging down.
He is the work, the raining down of it upon the rock, he is the constant flow, the up and down, the blood that powers it, he is the rhythm of the hammer blow.
They holler insults, sing, toss off their shirts, and feel the morning light on skin. He is the gang he works with.
He is the light on this blue morning. He is the sweat. He is the work he does. He is the life he leads. He is this man, standing upon a rock he will destroy. The Angel Ultimatum My daughter gave us the ultimatum when she was thirteen: No more tree. I’d already snapped plastic branches together and lifted the lid off the box of ornaments—all that reflective, crushable metal. But the poor tree, not lifeless although totally plastic, had lived with us in all our apartments, from Phoenix and Salt Lake City to this town in Maryland, interchangeable towns. For years, we’d placed presents under the gaze of our nomadic angel, under branches, interchangeable also. But now: giving presents is ok, she said, good will is ok, but atheists shouldn’t have a tree. I could have argued the philosophical niceties relating to that poor untinseled thing—but that would be hedging an ultimatum. Ok, I said: Goodwill and no tree. Copyright 2006-2012 by Cook Communication |