Cutting Metal

I've watched these men work here
for the past fifteen months.
Six am every day,
safety glasses on,
cigarettes torching,
steel toes humming.
They've been reefing in the
pre-dawn murk for an hour already
and their first coffee is an hour away.
A young man in canvas overalls
stands in a field of dreaming rebar,
chewing on a smoke and yakking
with his white-lidded foreman.
The man nods,
gestures a cutting motion
(his hand chopping his forearm)
and flicks his cherry to the dirt.
A spot of white breath is loosed before
he swings his visor down,
fires up his torch,
and gets down to cutting.
His hand is steady as
he chews the graysteel workpiece,
showered with suns.

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