Mucker

Once you have been called a mucker
Once you have felt the unbelievable
Heaviness, dead resistance of the mud
And thought in your deepest mind
I can’t do this
But then kept mucking through 
The five a.m. hangover fog
Followed close by the blinding sweat
Pooling in your rubber gloves
Filling your cold boots, kept mucking
Filling the holes your feet leave behind
Musty chemical concrete reek
Steaming up in the foggy dawn
Kept mucking while the cement
Burns your arms and the place on your cheek
Where you forgot and wiped the sweat away
Kept mucking long after your arms and legs 
Are no longer yours and the finishers start
Complaining about your grotesque incompetence,
Then you can never go back to the kindly lie
That work redeems, lifts up, builds the soul
You’ll know then that it is heavy
It is cold, lives in the dark, gnaws and feeds
On men’s elbows and shoulders and knees
Casts aside their bones in lonely places
Leaves them empty, wanting only to be sated
With sex and warmed by booze 
You’ll know a mucker is a monster
Slipping down the walls of the abyss
You’ll know, on the day you refuse
Or are unable, or forget finally
To go to the pour 
That no one will wonder where is he
There will only be the unbearably 
Heavy brutality of the concrete 
And they will only think
Dammit
We need another mucker.

Author: Duncan MacNae

Exiled Gael, scion of the Dust Bowl, dweller within Divine Grace, admirer of mountains, I have made my peace with trout and the starlings. Looking for a river and healing trees. duncanmacduncan5@gmail.com View all posts by Duncan MacNae