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Fred Voss

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What Makes The Wind Move

We are missing something
in the way a man pulls machine handles all day
until his body seems one with the machine
and the tide we are missing something
every time a horse runs down a track with everything
in its legs every time
the old man rolls over and wakes
with a dream of Charlie Chaplin
on his tongue and no one
to tell it to we are missing
the sun on the shirtsleeves of men unloading
boxcars the shadow
of the 6-foot-long crowbar the smile
of the man who has made his every dime with honest
muscle putting his fingers around a mug of beer crunching
of gravel under the steel-toed work boots of men
walking into the factory to work
their 60th hour because their children
need food we are
clicking station after station on TVs bored out of our minds and missing
the shovel
hurling earth over the shoulder of the ditch digger shoveling earth until he
                                                                                                      knows
what makes the wind
move the first turn
of the train wheel on the track in the hot noon
sun the way a heron
can stand still in a pool of water for one
hour the smoke
out of chimneys and the stacks of trucks grinding gears climbing to the top
of grades the trembling
of the one-week-old baby in the huge muscled arms
of her steel cutter
father.

 

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