I tip my hat to the famed
ghost pirate construction crews of Connecticut.
Many is the mere mortal who gets flustered and angry
at the site of abandoned cones and lane closures,
and nary a soul in site (but for the legions
of cars upon cars) but not I.
Not I, for I tip my hat to the famed
ghost pirate construction crews of Connecticut.
When it rains, or is threatening
to rain, or on Sundays, or at 8:01 on the Merritt –
the Merritt witching hour –
the spectral roadsmiths take to the blacktop. Neither snow,
nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom, can keep this CT ghostal service
from their appointed grounds.
Pickaxe in bony hand, they go about their unearthly labors
as unwatched and unknown
as the longest serving haunt of the lowest basement
of the DMV. I do not see them, hear only
the forlorn groaning of the Waterbury wind.
Whatever they are doing, it serves nothing to commute
the period of my imprisonment on the eternal chain gang of I-95.
But no matter: I tip my hat to the famed
ghost pirate construction crews of Connecticut,
and pray my constitution holds firm another day.