Construction Site, an approach to therapy

I'd rather be pouring concrete. If only
to wake up mornings with a simple answer
for every ache—to separate
this day's body from the last.
To dismiss the myth that we survive
   our sleep.

The wooden form is reassuring.
Itself a stabilizing, a holding in of weight
only to be knocked away when it becomes
merely a holding on—when the wood's strength
becomes the weak home of termites
colonizing the crawlspace.

In Glasgow, Charles Rennie Mackintosh
built a school of art of concrete
polished so smooth that you'd swear
it was marble.
             Inside, he built a library
from a forest—a garden enclosed
in concrete. A second Eden
where we, the damned, are free to eat.

Is it wrong to exalt this work, this toiling
under the sun? The building of towers,
the laying of foundations, the moving of stones
from one place to the other.




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