Factories

Early in the morning the factory is alive with smoke and steam,
a contrast to the icy river,
each white billow a promise

that inside, something is being made,
created day and night,
a living part of the river’s landscape.

You stand upstream, up wind, a mere passerby,
wondering at the life and history, how
this old place has lived so many lives

to come to where it is today.
How has it changed, and what miracles
live deep inside it’s clapboard walls,

and what strange gifts are created,
then sent
to places unknown?

Surviving is hard work. it does not just happen,
as you know from your own singular life
filled with work and maintenance and luck.

You take a picture and carry it home with you,
a reminder that history lives in each moment you live,
that the future is there too, all of it,

a wondrous miracle of creation marked
only by billows and old walls that people pass by every day
and never see.

About this poem.

“What do you do?” asked the clerk at the grocery store.

“I’m a poet.” I told her.

“But you look so normal.” she said.

True story.

The picture was taken of a factory in Greenwich, NY. I really ought to know what they make, but I don’t.

Tom