Another day-glow orange morning
of jack-hammering men in the street,
their steam-shovel coughing black fumes
into my second floor office window.
At random moments, the commotion
stops, the crew circling their black hole
to confer like psychoanalysts
at a case conference. And my patients
respond to the sudden quiet as if
silence grants permission to wonder
out loud— how deep these men will dig
before they uncover the problem,
what mysteries lay buried beneath
the road’s torn surface, how much
they admire the man who works
the shovel’s probing arm.
