the ferocious poets
the ladies who have kicked
a lover through the door
or pushed another
down the stairs
the men who've stevedored
or worked in steel mills
hoboed, built rock trails
strung cable across a canyon
I have not done most of these
I was an engineer in a dark room
helping fly a space robot
or helping turn its listening
or its seeing into what
humans could hear or see
and learn more in a week's trespass
than we had by peeping for four hundred years
but growing up I had swamped stalls
dug trenches for cables
built a trailer for data collection
nothing like stevedooring or rip rap
but somehow more alive than desk work
maybe that's it
I missed the loud and brash
and like to find it now
in someone else's poems
I missed working
elbow to elbow with Death
and like to read it now
as if it comforts me
that someone still risks death
collecting images for poems
the lack of which becomes
a finger I still wag in my own face
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