Two men on a roof
work in silence,
shirts off,
coppering on that slant;
hammers aloft,
arms silhouette against the sun
for that momentary pause
before the arc, described,
powers homeward
on a pinpoint of steel.
Steady slamming beats nail by nail in place,
and tier on tier
progresses to the apex.
Then they stand,
swaying in the heat,
aglisten with their toil -
one foot on each half of the world they built
that slides away from that point
too close to heaven -
and descend to earth.
written June 1979, published in Rejected Anthology of AIPF 2012
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