This evening, there was a road crew
in the streets of a colonial town.
They blocked traffic and began work at dusk.
The sunset against the faded red bricks
made the scene–and the big-bellied crew–
look like guests at a late-day garden party.
It appeared that one man ran the excavator
while the rest looked on,
the audience of an outdoor theater performance.
Their mundanity and at-odds presence
made me want to cry
and become one of them.
Never did laboring over asphalt and drains
seem so appealing–just a step down from the divine.
More than anything, it was the unspoken comfort,
the unrecognized camaraderie,
that made these humans glorious,
made them creatures I wanted to embody.
Or maybe it’s just that I forget I am perceived
and felt seen by them.
Saragun Springs 
A very wistful and artful look at a road crew. “Big-bellied…?” It made me smile.
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Jordan Eve
It’s great to see your work again. The desire to belong is powerful, even in the road crew. A bittersweet image in the mind.
Leila
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Jordan Eve
One huge reason this is a wonderful poem is because every single line in it is a surprise. Nothing is expected, all is fresh and new, and you take an everyday subject most of us ignore or don’t notice, or if we do notice it, we don’t take the time to embody it in song (poems are the original song/s). You shed a new light on what’s always been there right in front of our eyes. That is a magical happening which captures the magic of life itself.
Like Robert Frost, your tone is calm and mysterious. Also like Frost, your poem hovers around in, plays with, or partially invokes the divine, other realms, the heavenly hosts, the possibility of something greater, bigger, wider, and longer-lasting even than this whole visible universe itself. But you make no grand pronouncements, again like Frost, and it is this understatement which makes your work in this regard so convincing.
This would be a beautiful, well-made poem even for an old writer like me at 59. It’s amazing that you have been able to reach these heights of writing already. Amazing, and heartening and a great sign for the future of reading and writing in the USA! Looking forward to more of your work here next week…
Dale
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Beautiful lines like: “The sunset against the faded red bricks”
I like this voyeur’s view. The person who is apart from, watching and wanting, perhaps not knowing how, to become a part of.
The ending had a pinch of irony.
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