The crew has come: caravan of trucks
stationed on the street, unstacking cones
and digging ditches, deft and efficient.
Here in our yards, long years of earth
have been hefted by hand and heaped up on tarps.
A pneumatic mole emerges from the trailer,
and a heavy hose is hauled into place.
With a pop, the pumping compressor wakes
with startling strength. The strata are threaded,
pierced by the pounding power that forges
a buried boulevard. This burrow will convey
packets with payloads, pulses of light
modulated with meaning in marks and spaces,
carrying commerce and conversation.
The uproar ebbs by afternoon.
Machines are shut down and shovels return,
covering conduits with clods of soil.
The sod is reset and soaked thoroughly.
It’s late now. They load the last of the gear.
The dirt-girded duct is dark and untapped.
The glass-road will run to reach the houses
after fees are paid, when the final strands
will mate with modems and make connections.
Steven Searcy is the author of a poetry collection, Below the Brightness. His poems have appeared in various magazines and literary journals. He works as an engineer in fiber-optic communications and has authored technical papers for IEEE conferences and journals.Â
