The factories encircled us,
like gleaming battleships
with many wars to feed.
I watched my father wear down
from work, a sweat-stain heart
bleeding through his t-shirt.
By day the workers
dreamed of sleep, the bed
a balm for weary bones.
By night the workers
dreamed of work, their astral
bodies fitting parts to machines.
Sometimes, late at night,
they walked among the shadows of leaves,
seeking the solace of wounded stars.
I know now the world will not end,
because it turns on the endless labor
of those too tired to die.
Yet I did not know this
in my heart, my bones, before
I signed my first bottom line.
What did I know, in my summer
dreams, reading Thomas Wolfe
on my father’s front porch swing,
of all these mortal angels
looking homeward for a sign?
About Sean Lause
