Quad Mill Nights

Quad Mill Nights

My right foot used a pedal to operate chop saws

which popped alive from housings a foot from each hand;

there was a panel of buttons to control the bandsaw,

inches from my face, in its lethal path. Every four hours,

they exchanged freshly-sharpened steel.

The filers were a secret brotherhood,

hiding in attics, bent over sparking wheels,

tinkering with the precise details, shaving

each cutting face daily, brightening the massive ovals

again and again, but not too much.

Under everything Emery tended the Hog

casually, although so much depended upon

the smooth destruction of waste,

hour upon hour, day upon day, late into each night;

upon Emery carefully watching the metal detector,

looking at the scrap and kerf below, jolting

foot by foot downward and centerward,

all trimsaws, all wasted bark and dryrot,

spikeknots cut out whole and dropped,

ranks of eight-inchers, waning, removed,

sliding in the track past Emery, who sat,

leaning on a pickaroon, comfortable now

but not alert. All it took was a rock,

or a nail. Under all that machinery,

and a flawed human being.

Someone called Howard or John stood above,

watching. Sadly. As if the whole thing bored him.

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