Industrial Work

                                 for Ray Foddrell

I had an uncle who dreamt
of being an entrepreneur
but settled into industrial work.

Like a factory conveyer belt
he became nothing more
than an instrument of the process.

He drove rigs filled with some
entrepreneur's products,
hours upon hours, a dull drone

abiding. He never had wealth.
But unlike the CEO he had
time to bring a rig

over Colorado highlands,
pull it onto the shoulder,
and quell its black exhaust

in a scape of gemstone blues,
crystal lakes mirroring
glacier snowcaps — time to step

down not into a stalled life
but one delivered here
in God's cupped hands.  

 

--Crystal Simone Smith