digging

i remember some
of those jobs, at
nineteen, digging
a trench around
a house to find
a crack, to parge
the walls and bury
it back up in the heat
of summer,
the bleak frozen
mornings of winter.
i remember the pick
ax breaking, the shovels
snapping, it was that
cold. climbing into
the car to warm
up with my friends
who also had the luck
of digging, but we
were strong, young,
our backs could do
anything. we lived in
the nights, the day was
to make enough money
to allow the nights
to happen. but dig
we would, deeper,
around the footers of
hastily built homes
that leaked, that
had streams running
through the basements,
built on swamp land.
their misfortune
was our sweet luck.