Below the Saw Mill

St Regis Lumber Co. (circa 1977)

Withered and bent,
a hunchback man
in morning stands.
Steam-driven rods
thrust and clank
o'er his vault of toil,
deafening, dank.
The building shakes
as cables snake
past creosoted beams.
Once tall and lean,
now bent, unclean
of sweat and steam,
the old man sweeps.
The small dark room
of bench and broom
from which he sweeps
to earn his keep -
I still see clearly
in my sleep.
There long ago -
there was a crack,
and cables took
as cables do
when cables snap -
the shortest route
from me to you.
Steel breached
his flesh and bone.
And doctors mended
what they could,
and thus it came to be.
Now old and bent,
it goes unspoken,
"A lucky man is he
for he is not
completely broken".
And leaders of the company
did show some generosity
with calculated loyalty -
the type you find in industry -
for nothing here is given free.
An offer made
was accepted,
and thus it came to be.
A family, pride,
and bills to pay
every day, now
keep him 'neath
the great machine,
to toil and keep
his basement clean,
while o'er 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
like snow -
between the cracks,
as he has -
to the concrete floor below.
With dirt-black face
and empty eyes,
into the broom
he leaned,
the morning that I met him,
when I was just eighteen.

R.L. Johnson, revised 2019