Workroom

Workroom

This is dark work, what we do—
it stains
what it touches.

Spine-sung, bone-knotted,
we hold our tools
wet with our longing,
blood and bile.

Watchers from the windows
have no mind for it,
cover their ears
so as not to hear.

I don't blame them.
Even as I stand on this far side
I can scarcely see.
But I see,
I see.

*
Photographer Sally Mann
Poem completed 2/2014