Building Site

I work with men on a building site
above a lake so blue.
Older men, veterans of wars,
with missing fingers and gnarled thumbs.
This acceptance of life,
how late it comes.  How soon it passes.
It gives me fright.
I work with men on a building site.

Their lusty tales fill my head
of Japanese baths, Korean campaigns.
Their musty pasts evoke my present.
They joke with me, are kind and pleasant.
Their cracked hands know the nail and splinter.
We work till dark in the waning winter,
lay down our tools at approach of night.
I work with men on a building site.

I'm forty-one, but child to them.
They are the joist and two-by-four.
If this be wisdom,
give me more and more.
Give me beam and truss, solid and true.
Give me nail and stud to frame a life.
Give me level and plum to guage my sight.
I work with men on a building site
above a lake so blue.

Tragedies that scar the heart:
the wife that died, the house that burned,
the friend that ran, the child that fell.
These stories that they blithely tell
ring in my ears in morning's frost.
The money they've made, the future they've lost,
hang in the air like a bird in flight.
I work with men on a building site.

Their wives are wise, strong and old.
Their lives are working, brave and bold.
Their bodies in pain, they are weak of eye.
They walk the beams so free and high.
They walk the beams like younger men.
They've walked those beams since God knows when.
Since God knows when, they know no fright.
I work with men on a building site.

It's just a holiday job for me.
Next month I walk away.  I'm free.
They labour on past retirement years.
They labour on and on.  I fear
I'll never know a peace so frail.
I gain no peace from hammer and nail.
I know no peace in the dark of night.
I work with men on a building site
above a lake so blue.