Bus Poem #8; Penelope Poem by robert dickerson

It seems like Penelopes' weaving, West 14th Street-
eternally under construction, that is.
Yet all gains rapidly unravelled
by night when only the drunks and the tv people
walk the glittering sidewalks, rambling, lost
in their thoughts, talking out their heads.

All summer long, like Penelope's nightly weaving
the ditch undigs itself, the concrete flows
backwards up ghostly troughs
dropped from a thick and wholly starless sky;
the freshly laid asphalt sublimes,
the street unbastes itself along carefully laid seams,
its fresh white line
wound up in a ball
while Penelope herself sits bare-headed
on her bed over Reddens' Funeral Home
weeping into the heat.

Each morning the workmen return
like unbidden suitors, loathed but borne,
a keener one occasionally pushing back his hat,
muttering a parbleu of dismay, daring not
to be sharing suspicians with duller chums.

After all, a job is a job, and one
job being like another, all
jobs are equally ok, and this
is a job.