What They Left Behind

The day after the phone company
jackhammered the asphalt
on this neighborhood street,
the air turned cool and dry.

What they left behind:
buried cables, piles of clay,
a few orange cones,
a hillock of dirt in the center
of the roadway, for which
most drivers slow to cross, gingerly.

Those cars that don’t
buck and rattle, churn up
dust that rises, then lingers
in the air, smelling of nothing,
hazing your vision, like, after a disaster,
so many souls startled
to be shook loose at last
from their heavy, beloved bodies.