3-foot blue cannisters of nitro <br />along a conveyor belt, slow fish <br />speaking the language of silence. <br />On the roof, I in my respirator <br />patching the asbestos gas lines <br />as big around as the thick waist <br />of an oak tree. "These here are <br />the veins of the place, stuff <br />inside's the blood." We work in rain, <br />heat, snow, sleet. First warm <br />spring winds up from Ohio, I <br />pause at the top of the ladder <br />to take in the wide world reaching <br />downriver and beyond. Sunlight <br />dumped on standing and moving <br />lines of freight cars, new fields <br />of bright weeds blowing, scoured <br />valleys, false mountains of coke <br />and slag. At the ends of sight <br />a rolling mass of clouds as dark <br />as money brings the weather in.<br /><br />Philip Levine<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/making-it-work/
