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  • Working Outside at Night - Denis Johnson

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    The poem describes a worker doing night shifts outside, as the moon rises and the sun sets, painting the rooftops and machinery orange. While working alone with his shovel in the silence, his thoughts drift to returning home to coffee before young girls head to school, and he finds solace in the simple physical labor as a distraction from personal troubles during this difficult time in his life.

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    The poem describes a worker doing night shifts outside, as the moon rises and the sun sets, painting the rooftops and machinery orange. While working alone with his shovel in the silence, his thoughts drift to returning home to coffee before young girls head to school, and he finds solace in the simple physical labor as a distraction from personal troubles during this difficult time in his life.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    14 views2 pages

    Working Outside at Night - Denis Johnson

    Uploaded by

    ronnangeles
    The poem describes a worker doing night shifts outside, as the moon rises and the sun sets, painting the rooftops and machinery orange. While working alone with his shovel in the silence, his thoughts drift to returning home to coffee before young girls head to school, and he finds solace in the simple physical labor as a distraction from personal troubles during this difficult time in his life.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    of 2

    Working Outside at Night

    BY DENIS JOHNSON

    The moon swells


    and its yellow darkens
    nearer the horizon
    and soon all
    the aluminum rooftops

    shall appear, orange


    and distinct beside
    the orange sun,
    while the diamond
    flares in its vacuum

    within. It is simple
    to be with the shovel,
    thoughtless, inhabited
    by this divorce,
    it is good

    the luminous
    machinery, silenced,
    waits, nice
    that the conveyor
    belts choked with sand

    convey nothing.
    When I return home to
    coffee at
    7:45 the lithe
    young girls will be going
    to high school, pulling

    to their mouths stark


    cigarettes through
    Arizona’s sunlight.
    These last few months
    have been awful, and when

    around five the roosters


    alone on neighboring
    small farms begin
    to scream like humans
    my heart just lies down,
    a stone.

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