e u s t a c i e s

And what of the
ancestors?
These,
the coke workers
boilermakers
tobacco strippers
apple pickers
pit miners
steel workers
corn sorting
rice growing
crop sowing
field gleaning
men,
women,
and children.
If these lives
covered pages
onion skin thin
we'd begin

to see
how their work
over the ages
built books as well as
empires.