Swagger

In a land without a shore,
a foreman was our
Ahab, stomping a leg
stiff with old war wounds
on the bed of a sapphire 
Ranchero, pointing
with a clipboard 
where we sweat ourselves numb
up ladders with mortar
bucket by bucket to a half-
framed second story.
We were expanding
a white clapboard steakhouse
where prime cuts
would be charred to order.
On break we discussed
over baloney sandwiches
how much blood we liked
in the middle and if
it ran hot or cool and what
you would sop it up with.
Mostly I waited
on this one mason
who trowelled fresh mud
between layers of brick
meticulously and forever.
Why was Sanders, whose father
was a cardiologist,
even there—bragging
he could get us whatever
weed we wanted? The coarse
and unforgiving blocks
I barehanded a level up
onto scaffolding
turned my palms and fingers
into manly-seeming rawhide.
A roofer who walked
onto a loose sheet of plywood
overhanging the edge
danced for an instant free as
Steppenwolf on a magic carpet, and
watching him getting checked
out on the lawn
we told ourselves if sober
he could have ended up
paralyzed. Most of everyone 
I ever spoke to had hardly
even left the county, but
it was a Friday
and you could see overhead
the ladder rails reach
beyond the roof line into something
between a royal and a
baby blue—an unbroken sky,
plus we were virgins. 

TOM CARRIGAN

Tom Carrigan was born in Rutland, Vermont, in 1949. He has been an educator in classrooms and libraries, devising strategies for evaluating online information and integrating graphic novels into ELL curricula. His poems have appeared in Rattle, The Collagist, Poetry Northwest, Rust & Moth, and other publications. Tom volunteers with Beacon Prison Rides, a project that provides free transportation for families between the Beacon, New York train station and nearby prisons.