poem

 Occupational Safety

In the silver light just before dawn

Trees clutch from the ground

Like old arthritic hands 

Gnarled into permanent rictus 

After so many years

Clawing to the surface

Through a thick crust of rock

And the remains of the dead.

Oh, the traumas they’ve endured!

If nothing else

We are here to witness

The bitter deformity

Of collective suffering—

Bones smashed in the grinding gears

Of rock and time.

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