High in the Sierra
green summer aspen
whisper to the lake.
The snowpack glitters.
Over the passes
Winnebago thunder
out of the wide red flats of Nevada.
Huge crooked knuckles,
the dark screes loom.
Deep in the roadbeds,
the bones of the Irish
& Chinese workers
whose lives were pitted
against one another
to drive down & down
the price of their labor
—who shattered their bodies
dynamiting these crossings—
blaze in their graves.
From Rift Zone by Tess Taylor, forthcoming from Red Hen Press.
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