See if you can see how far out it goes; see? You can't see the end!
I'd take
you out there
but it's a six hour walk
and the work redundant: one board
laid down after another.
When the sun is high
the boards are hot.
Splinters always pose a problem walking any other way but straight.
What keeps
me working on it, driving piles,
hauling timber, what's kept my hand
on
the hammer, the barnacle scraper,
what keeps me working through the
thirst,
the nights when the waves' tops pound
the pier from beneath,
what keeps me glad
for the work, the theory is, despite the ridicule
at
the lumberyard, the treks with pails
of nails (my arms
2cm longer each
trip), the theory
is this: it's my body's habit,
hand over foot, pay
check to pay check,
it's in the grain of my bones,
lunch box to lunch
bucket.
It's good to wear an X
on my back, to bend my back to the sky,
it's right
to use the hammer and the saw,
it's good to sleep
out
there - attached at one distant end
and tomorrow adding to that
distance.
The theory
is: It will be a bridge.