The Earth and the Stars in the Palm of Our Hand

“Another day in paradise,”
a machinist says to me as he drops his time card into the time clock and the sun
rises
over the San Gabriel mountains
and we laugh
it’s a pretty good job we have
considering how tough it is out there in so many other factories
in this era of the busted union and the beaten-down worker
but paradise?
and we walk away toward our machines ready for another 10 hours inside tin walls
as outside perfect blue waves roll onto black sand Hawaiian beaches
and billionaires raise martini glasses
sailing their yachts to Cancún
but I can’t help thinking
why not paradise
why not a job
where I feel like I did when I was 4
out in my father’s garage
joyously shaving a block of wood in his vise with his plane
as a pile of sweet-smelling wood shavings rose at my feet
and my father smiled down at me and we held
the earth and the stars in the palm of our hand
why not a job
joyous as one of these poems I write
a job where each turn of a wrench
each ring of a hammer makes my soul sing out glad for each drop of sweat
rolling down my back because the world has woken up and stopped worshiping money
and power and fame
and because presidents and kings and professors and popes and Buddhas and mystics
and watch repairmen and astrophysicists and waitresses and undertakers know
there is nothing more important than the strong grip and will of men
carving steel
like I do
nothing more important than Jorge muscling a drill through steel plate so he can send money
to his mother and sister living under a sacred mountain in Honduras
nothing more noble
than bread on the table and a steel cutter’s grandson
reaching for the moon and men
dropping time cards into time clocks and stepping up to their machines
like the sun
couldn’t rise
without them.

Volcano Rumble T-Rex Roar

Out on this machine shop floor we are old
as the meteor smashing into earth a billion years ago full of the iron
we cut
old
as a slave dragging a stone toward pharaoh’s pyramid
a tooth
of T-Rex slicing through the neck of a Brontosaurus like Al’s cutter shaving
through brass round stock
in the office it is new as the latest
stock market number
cocktail party rumor
Silicon Valley smartphone app
but out on our machine shop floor Vincente’s whistle
is old as the first bird’s
song
Gus
drops a 200-pound block of 4130 steel into a vise with a thud old
as gravity
Tibor’s welding rod flashes into brilliance bright as the birth
of the sun
as sheet metal
in the muscled hands of Carl cracks
like lightning
over an African jungle when man still lived
in trees
while in the offices the internet hums and the telephones ring with the latest
sales wars slogans rocket engines gimmicks
out on this shop floor we are old
as Ulysses
pointing his boat toward home
Arthur
pulling his sword Excalibur from the stone
Job
going on as Gilberto sparks on his torch so it roars
blue flame through 1-ton bar spitting molten steel
orange
as the lava running down from the lip of the volcano that made
this land.

Homeless Shelter Bed Frame or Prison Door

Someday
will the muscles we have built in our arms and backs and legs lifting blocks
of raw steel give us the right to say
what we make
out of that steel
wheel of train taking child to see her first
ocean wave
instead of helicopter
gun barrel shooting down grandmother in Iraq
will the way we cradle
and carve the steel with all the care we can find in our hearts give us
the power
to choose to make basin for drinking fountain a little school child playing on a hot day hugs
to drink cold water to keep
from fainting
instead of gun barrel of fighter jet that will fell
a hospital
will the years we have put in sweating between these tin walls summoning
all our courage to go on cutting
raw steel to perfect
precision
count for as much as the words of presidents and kings
will it have the power to make
wheelchair wheel instead of bomb
homeless shelter bed frame instead of prison cell door
flashlight for fireman to find trapped baby instead of police baton
to beat a homeless man
someday
will the way we hold
and caress and measure and polish this steel with our hands
full of the blood of our hearts that love
sons and granddaughters and great grandsons be enough
to say
the steel I-beams we make for skyscrapers will raise a city
where no one goes hungry
or sleeps on a sidewalk
someday
when the cheap hollow talk of the politicians finally fades away
and the honest hands of men who hold
and heave and carve the raw steel have
the final say.

Broccoli and Salmon and Red Red Apples

Let the poet lift a hammer
let the poet break bread
with a man lying down in a bunk in a skid row midnight mission homeless shelter
let the poet come out from behind the walls of his ivory tower
and feel the steering wheel of a downtown Long Beach bus in his hands
as he steers it toward a 66-year-old grandmother
who rides it to work at a factory grinding wheel
let him feel the 12-hour sun the lettuce picker feels beating down on the back
of his neck
let him pull a drill press handle
hook a steel hook through a steel pan full of motorcycle sidecar yokes and drag it
100 feet across a gouged concrete factory floor as drop hammers pound
let him grease a gear turn a wheel
crack a locknut serve a plateful of crab
drain a panful of oil plant
a stick of dynamite hook a tuna
in the deep green sea dig bulldozer bucket teeth
into the side of a hill feel
how good the sun feels on his face Sunday morning
when he’s finally gotten a day off after 72 hours behind windowless factory
tin walls
how good a tree looks
or a river sounds or a baby feels
in his arms
when he’s earned his bread with the sweat on his back
how true a star
and the notes of Beethoven and the curl of a wave around the nose of his surfboard are
when he’s thrown his arms around a 1-ton bar of steel
and guided it into a furnace full
of white-hot flame
how much a wildflower or a fire truck siren or a pick
in the fists of a man in the depths of a coal mine
mean
when he earns his bread by getting the dirt of this earth
on his hands
how human
we all are covered in soft skin and pulsing
with warm blood and deserving
of a roof over our head and a bed under our bones and a laugh
around a dinner table piled high
with broccoli and salmon
and red red apples.

Fred Voss, a machinist for over 30 years, has had three collections of poetry published by the UK’s Bloodaxe Books. His latest, Hammers and Hearts of The Gods, was selected a Book of the Year 2009 by the Morning Star. He is regularly published in magazines such as Poetry Review, Ambit, Atlanta Review and Pearl, and has twice been the subject of feature programs about his poetry on National BBC Radio 4. In 2011 he was featured poet in a hardbound limited edition of Dwang from Tangerine Press. His debut novel, Making America Strong, is available from World Parade Books.

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