18 

Steam 

With pain, I shake my dull 
and useless head of fumes 
thanks to patience 
and lack of heat. 

The noxious gas creeps naturally 
from the stove and kerosene heater 
to mouth through skin into lungs and 
blood to brain, confronting all the while. 

Failure to see the labor 
Needed to repair the broken 
Boiler in the light and dark 
of suffering is personally 
regretable reasoning in circumspect. 

900 pound pans 
need welds, knowhow, manpower 
and 8 days to join 
with the steam-
marker, which once assembled, 
carries dry, radiated warmth 
to converted rooms 
inside the tall, 1800's era building 
with a barbershop downstairs. 

by Tom Hoffman