Poem Number 16756

Baltimore and Ohio Railroad

How often I roused you up
before the foreman got there
and caught you sleeping off
a drunk.
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How I trusted you even after that
as you swung the nail hammer
in a perfect ark thundering down
without a vibration in the spike I held.
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Today I thought of you again
scaring up a flying grasshopper
who flew straight into the garage
door then staggered around for a time
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spitting bits of tobacco juice
as it picked its way across white stones,
stones just like we tamped under ties,
Benito, just like.
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I wonder if you are dead, Benito, like
like most of the old men I knew who could
do anything at night and still work all day
and were younger than I am.