Peter Greene

Aquadynamics and the far dark boom of quarry rock

people do much larger things than I

a blast far away in the quarry con

firms it – big men, three hundred pounds and more,

who lose hands between boulders the size of houses, reaching

for the one rock out of place – com

posing vast poems whose subtle song

of a million million voices

expresses itself in the vast and perfect

           slight tilt

of a barge that will be three years

moving from here to far Dubai – attended

by helicopters, the machine train sighs

across the seas and these vast men merely man it – each, too

exhausted in his turn – the gulls cry screaming

in the wake of the tugs and chains – they, smaller than I

tend this great procession

with far greater knowledge and attention

than I, a poet not too far by

enchanted by booms

and the stories of large men

who do larger things , I reach

for that one detail out of place

that will fix the scene in place, in mind forever

but the rocks roll on today

and I pull back a stump.