Another work poem.
This is from a road crew job.
This is called "The Spring."
"Beating asphalt into highway potholes, pickup truck
we'd loaded, road repair stock shed and yard, a day
so hot the asphalt went in soft.
Pipe and steel plate tamper, took turns up by hand.
Then drive the truck rear wheel a few times
back and forth across the fill.
Finish it off with bitchmo around the edge.
The foreman said, let's get a drink,
and drove through woods and flower fields, shovels
clattering in back, into a black grove
by a cliff, a rocked-in pool feeding a fern ravine,
tin can to drink, numbing the hand and cramping in the gut,
surging through the fingers from below and dark here.
Let's get back to the truck, get back on the job."