June 2015
I worked for 25 years as an iron ore miner, steelworker, and laborer, am active in social struggles (black lives matter!), and enjoy fishing and traveling with my wife, Barbara Greenway, a soon-to-be retired English teacher. Recent poetry appears in Salmagundi, River Styx, Saranac Review, The Moth (Ireland), and previous issues of Verse-Virtual. My books are JOHN HENRY'S PARTNER SPEAKS (Word Tech) and WORKING HERE (Rooster Hill Press, Minnesota State University). I am finishing a novel based on the lives of the sandhogs who dug the Holland Tunnel in New York City. For more about me check out my website www.DSalner.wix.com/salner or shoot me an email. Thanks for your interest in my poetry!
B l u e M o r n i n g
after the painting by George Bellows, 1909
after the painting by George Bellows, 1909
A whistle stills the site, hushes
the whine and hum of cables.
Powder settles through the cyan light
into the quiet air of coffee break.
Someone tosses up a thermos,
which he catches in a blistered hand—
this man who sits upon the rock
he will destroy. He unscrews the top
and something swirls into the air,
heat vapors from a battered cup.
The stillness of this moment—
a mix of silica, a blur of fumes—
hovers above this crater
in the granite heart of town.
He sips the coffee, harsh and black,
the bitterness all his, tries to expand
this moment, savor the endlessness.
The whistle that will send him back to work
and break the day to shards of jagged light
seems an eternity away.
the whine and hum of cables.
Powder settles through the cyan light
into the quiet air of coffee break.
Someone tosses up a thermos,
which he catches in a blistered hand—
this man who sits upon the rock
he will destroy. He unscrews the top
and something swirls into the air,
heat vapors from a battered cup.
The stillness of this moment—
a mix of silica, a blur of fumes—
hovers above this crater
in the granite heart of town.
He sips the coffee, harsh and black,
the bitterness all his, tries to expand
this moment, savor the endlessness.
The whistle that will send him back to work
and break the day to shards of jagged light
seems an eternity away.
©2015 David Salner