Daybreak

Darren Higgins

Here the sun must be ferried over the mountains
like Fitzcarraldo's steamship

Morning hardens
The plaited ropes scorch our palms

scoring them
like sheet music—the sound of the trees

felled, the groaning cables, the pulleys' rooster wail
Resting, we hold up our hands

and read the labor
of these hours as if from a great distance

What can I tell you about the moment the sun
sails off, free of us, on the other side?

Every day it is the same
machinery