I enjoy

watching men and women work.

The brick layer

halfway up a wall.

A painter turning

sheet-rock-dull gray

into canary yellow.

A greensman leaves the lawn

well weeded, mowed and edged.

I don’t need

a fifth generation cell phone

with Candy Crush

or an AGT audition…

Just sit me cross the street

from a new addition

going up

or an old factory going down

or a cracked sewer pipe

exhumed from beneath some

Manhattan street.

Leave me!

I’ll be fine!

That humans have learned

to do

and over time to replicate,

to do again,

step by step,

load a nail gun,

reroof a roof

is miracle enough for me

to keep watching,

enthralled!

For it’s helped humanity

stay out of the caves

long enough

to build what we call,

“Home”

and then to mess it all up

with “Progress”

and to

maybe

build it all over again!

I’ll just keep watching, thank you.

I have the time!

Retirement is everything

it’s cracked up to be!