Blue Morning
Inspired
by Blue
Morning, George Bellows’ 1909 painting
of
workers on the excavation of Pennsylvania Station.
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.
