Hooking Up the Power, and: Learning to Walk

For Milt Neidenburg and Rosie who said "profaned."

Hooking Up the Power

The yellow crane lowers its neck, its beak, its hook.
A man on the ground talks to a man at the gears, his hands
say finger swizzle up, finger swizzle down, horned fist, thumbs
touch, in, closer, thumbs and fingers yap, yap, let go, let go!
He waves this way, that, casual, and the weight obeys.
He's signaling down a green metal box. It hovers, he talks
while four men stand at the corners. They guide wires over
porcelain spools, thread through the needle's eye, beaded
jeweled ropes their hands will bind into the invisible grid.
Their hands make a fastening, 13,000 volts pour through,
electric water they switch on. The crane man lowers the box
over the last inch, careful as a glass of water set on the table.
The old crane operator says there were two, three hundred
workers in his building, production levels unbelievable, end of
the Korean War. He was pouring tons of steel over their heads, [End Page 16
no brakes, one lever vertical, one horizontal, got into a swing,
hit a skid of machines. I almost killed a man. Pure luck
the equipment fell like a tent over him. He climbed down,
threw his operator's button on the floor. That's how the foreman
knew he'd quit, middle of the shift, so loud he couldn't hear,
couldn't talk. Except he could have gone anywhere in the world
where they were making steel, and made himself understood.
When he visited there not long ago, it was fields and grass,
seven or eight miles of buildings gone where once the smoke
profaned everything. When I pass by later, the men have left.
They've left behind the blank box. One told me it's called a switch,
like on a wall. There's nothing else to show they hooked up enough
power for a parking garage, two high-rises either side. Light, spoken.

Learning to Walk

The sparkling water, the red tug pushing a long flat barge.
Low land rises to aluminum, prefab concrete, glass, pale steel.
The long arms of cranes are lifting the old city higher and higher.
On the promenade, an Asian woman, a toddler in a purple coat.
The child climbs up and down the shallow flight of steps, onefoot,
then the other down, sideways, sometimes holding the rail, ornot,
sometimes jumping from the last step. The woman stands with hands
outstretched to catch at the bottom of the steps. The child goesup,
goes down, down, up. The woman stands, hands outstretched. When
the child jumps off the last step, the woman claps. The child goes up,
back and forth, one side, the other. The woman stretches herhand
out to touch, and the child wiggles violently, silently, no, don'thelp.
The woman stretches out her hands, once, twice, four times, six times.
The child walks a few feet to look at the water, holds both handsup
to the woman, pick me up, higher. They lean over the water, thenshe,
he pushes away to be set down, and runs to the steps. The woman
leans on the railing to watch. The child side-steps down, one step,
and sees some pigeons doubled by shadow to a flock, stumbles
toward the birds who can walk and fly too. The woman reachesout
her hand. The child runs in the patch of sun. Beyond, a tug pushes
a bulging scrap-metal barge downriver. Scattered clouds overhead
cruise between the climbing walls, then head upriver along the water.