Below the Sawmill

  
Towering o’er the hunchback man
Steam driven arms thrust and clank
A vault of toil, deafening, dank
The ceiling shakes a cable snakes past creosoted beams
Once tall and lean, now bent unclean of sweat and steam
The old man sweeps

A small dark room of bench and broom
From where he sweeps to earn his keep
A place I still see in my sleep
Long ago there was a crack, and a cable took as cables do
When cables snap, the shortest route from me to you
Steel breaches flesh and bone

Doctors mend what doctors can
And though he’s bent, it’s left unspoken
A lucky man he is, for he’s not altogether broken
And the leaders of the company in all their generosity
Show their binding loyalty, but nothing ever comes for free
An offer made is accepted

A wife a child and bills to pay
And so beneath the grand machine
He works to keep the basement clean
Above his head, steam pressure makes the mighty head rig lunge
Teeth of saw blades tear the air, and into timber plunge
Slabs of hemlock feed the mill

And sawdust falls between the cracks
Just as he has, to the floor below, to a life hollow
A life bent and crooked hard to swallow
Dirt blackened face and empty eyes, into the broom he leans
I walked in green, just a teen, sent below the mill to clean
When I came upon the hunchback man