The Beauty of the Cement Truck

swirling, the burly sludge slogging 
down the trough 

into the dug-out designated spaces
in its brief time as a river

the urgency of the waiting men’s
work as we watched the magic

shift from liquid to solid
the smooth simple squares

one after another to form 
the angled loop around our block

to keep us on track to go nowhere.
Our fathers stood watching with us

offering their worn wisdom: keep moving, 
is all I gathered, before it sets.

JIM DANIELS

Jim Daniels’ latest poetry collections include Gun/Shy (Wayne State University Press) and two chapbooks, The Human Engine at Dawn (Wolfson Press) and the forthcoming Comment Card (Carnegie Mellon University Press). His new fiction collection The Luck of the Fall (Michigan State University Press) will be published later this year. A native of Detroit, he lives in Pittsburgh and teaches in the Alma College low-residency MFA program.