Himself and two more, the riggers arrive
at eight. One squat, the others lean
as bamboo—tough too—they laugh,
You need a size 6 hat and a 44 chest
to do this work.
Beneath the porch,
through a trap door is an entrance
to our basement where the drowned
washer and dryer, cold furnace, rest
in rusty puddles of weeks-old
rainwater. I watch the men calculate
the weight, the shape of what must be
removed.
And my son, a balky boy asleep
in the smallest room at the top of the house?
I call him: Come down and see.
Thick and beautiful knots
of heavy rope, the geometry of eyebolt
and derrick, pulley, tackle, and sling. But he sleeps
through the morning while the men frame rough
pine on site, then balance the shifting load
above their shoulders, shout: Away.
