our fathers

the sweat drips thick from
their humble brows or
from their necks, from their arms
and fingertips

it is not nature that keeps them
there, in abstruse and rambling bondage but
man, part themselves and part all others
the perennial owners of

vapid toil.  but they think
not of themselves in what they do
crank and lever, valve and measure
wood and wire and brawn

until progeny or matter
the fruit of chronic endeavor
surpasses them like
time itself