Is this poem "politically correct" by today's standards? It matters not, for it was written roughly eighty years ago by an Irish immigrant's child whose father was killed in a construction accident. She was able to see poetry in the physical working of a road crew. Evelyn wrote on ethereal subjects, but she also was drawn to find beauty in the ordinary and the everyday.
Each in His Groove
There are shadows on the street --
Live shadows, with hearts that beat,
And muscles that swirl
Like rope, as black arms hurl
Burdened shovels into the air,
Out of the air,
Building a street!
Swinging concrete
That oozes thick
Over mute red brick,
The jungle plodder
Feeds his fodder
To the suffocating dust.
Africa seals
A compact crust
For city wheels.
Evelyn Coffey
This and the following poem give us a glimpse of Evelyn's ordinary world in Cleveland, the life on the street, the interplay between humanity and nature. It is interesting too to consider the historical significance here, the black laborers, the paving over of the cobblestones with more modern asphalt or concrete. She will write other poems about these changes, the building of bridges that shade out trees that had grown in the sun that they steal.
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