Wind Turbine Erection: A Time Lapse Video by Lisa Fay Coutley

I’m watching in accelerated motion as men dig
a deep dish & fill it with the concrete needed

to hold the turbine’s base, to steady the blades
it takes one train & six semis to deliver to these

Great Plains. Things could be as simple as naming
someone the small town police chief of our hearts

yet we love with the forgiveness of science.
Anyone who’s not afraid has never crawled

to a rooftop to escape growing, poisoned water.
Don’t say hope to me. Even a tree knows better

than to bet against windthrow. Died unexpectedly
always means it was their life to take & choice

is hope. Do you know how small a man looks
inside a wind turbine’s shaft, gripping his tool

to bolt every, erect section closed? Of course
I worry for his safety. For the earth. The birds.  

No one knows how many will die or when
my dog will go, but I can tell he’ll go alone.

We’re always about to bleed, my friend
& I agree—our bodies patterns of pain

for unsung songs. That’s one way to see it.
See what can be seen, you tell me, as if

I’d been trying to take our picture from two
million miles away. I hope Earth destroys us

before we destroy each other, I want to say,
but how can I make you see a woman’s right

to burn her temple with all her children inside.

Lisa Fay Coutley is the author of Errata (Southern Illinois University Press, 2015) and In the Carnival of Breathing (Black Lawrence Press, 2011). She’s received a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship and is an Assistant Professor of Poetry and Creative Nonfiction in the Writer’s Workshop at the University of Nebraska Omaha.