A Song of Thrift
Three workers fell when their scaffold collapsed.
They died at once. Was anyone hopeful?
Did someone say, “Shit,” in his native language
Or call to the god who lets things happen?
Someone stole the bolts in the night
While the watchmen drank soup.
Someone took a wrench and pliers in the dark
To repair the trunk that would not stay shut.
And he never learned the thing he had done,
Even driving the widows to the cemetery,
A good fare with waiting time and tip,
Light traffic on the secondary roads.
STUART DISCHELL is the author of Good Hope Road, a National Poetry Series Selection, Evenings & Avenues, Dig Safe, Backwards Days and Children With Enemies and the pamphlets Animate Earth and Touch Monkey and the chapbook Standing on Z. His poems have appeared in The Atlantic, Agni, The New Republic, Slate, Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, and anthologies including Essential Poems, Hammer and Blaze, Pushcart Prize, and Garrison Keillor’s Good Poems. A recipient of awards from the NEA, the North Carolina Arts Council, and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, he teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina Greensboro.
