how like astronauts they look
these men and women
who stitch bedrock to the sky
carpenters, ironworkers,
jumpered against the cold, bound in slow-motion
over torn, heaved landscape
excavators, shovels, and backhoes
minuet with dump trucks and dynamite
to crush rock and rearrange the earth
architects and foremen gesture over tables,
chew cigars, eat sandwiches from bags,
their breaths hang in the air
as they interpret writ holy as old scrolls
a cloud of limestone dust sifts down
over operators, hod carriers, common laborers–
ancient sediments and fossils
transformed into the raw material
of hopes, dreams, and just plain work
