[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com]

It’s a stormy afternoon where I’m writing from. Loud and creeping grey. Not the kind of rain you sing in. There’ll be no park strolling or quarry swimming today. Flashes through the window tempt the unwary with the notion that the workplace is more sanctuary than prison, but that’s a lie. These are the POETS Days that try men’s souls. Freedom is won. It’s an assertion. Step out the door. Face the elements. Start your weekend early. Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday. Be Lieutenant Dan, but in homage to the mighty acronym may I suggest setting aside a moment for a little verse?

***

This is the most audacious landscape. The gangster’s
stance with his gun smoking and out is not so
vicious as this commercial field, its hill of glass.
– Muriel Rukeyser, “The Book of the Dead: Alloy”

In 1930, Rinehart and Dennis contracted to build a tunnel through Gauley Mountain near Gauley Bridge, West Virginia for New Kanawha Power Company, a subsidiary of the Union Carbide and Carbon Company, to divert the New River towards a hydroelectric plant.

Of the five thousand men employed to work on the project, some twenty-nine hundred toiled underground in ten to fifteen hour shifts. The project, completion estimated at four years from ground break, was finished in eighteen months. The mountain was composed of remarkably pure silica, so in compliance with safety regulations only wet drilling, a process that cut down on breathable silica in the air, was strictly adhered to when inspectors were on site. The rest of the time they dry drilled.