Excavate

Jennifer Henry

Stand in your truth
Feast in your exposed glory
Battles you’ve overcome
Ruins that are immaculate
Gleaming in exposure
Pour the foundation
One that can withstand
Pressure and heat
Struck to the core and
Shaken
Dance with sunlight
Beaming on your face
Receiving
Awakening before all the stirrings
Fight complacency
Peer over the wall
Penetrate
Celebrate where your journey
Has taken you
Bifurcated roads you’ve explored
Pave new ones
Not immune to erosion yet 
Purposed
They exist in you
You’ve not yet
Begun to excavate in
True quiet

The Science

This poem was written right after my husband and I visited our house while it was in construction. Week after week we saw the process of the footings being dug, foundation being poured, the house being framed, and finally the roof. In my 20-year career in telecommunications, I have been exposed to structural calculations, concrete cylinder testing, and geological reports that ensure a successful and safe build. Structural calculations are done to guarantee the telecommunications tower (a structure that has antennas and equipment mounted on it to support cell phone use) can withstand the winds or earthquakes in that area while carrying the antenna load. Concrete cylinder testing tells us the concrete's compressive strength. Tests and studies are done when the immediate ecosystem of that area might be impacted by construction. There is due diligence for building a safe structure, whether it’s a building or a tower. The human experience is full of a wide array of struggles and successes as are construction projects. When a person is struggling, how much personal excavation happens? They are forced to face themselves and their circumstance and excavate for their way out. We shift away the soil with a spade, examine our findings and organize the best way out of the struggle. We all exist through a vast number of miracles in timing and science. I used words that reminded me of the landscape and construction to build this poem. The words flowed out of me as if all the moments spent witnessing telecommunications sites being built were for the creation of this piece.

The Poet

Jennifer Henry (she/her) is a Filipino American writer who lives in Jurupa Valley, CA. She loves writing poetry, discovering new restaurants, traveling, and music. She was published in the Pivot & Pause anthology published by Tell(h)er Co. in 2020, with an introduction by Elizabeth Gilbert and edited by Azure Antoinette. On Saturdays Jennifer can be found in her office having coffee and on zoom thoughtfully responding to writing prompts with her writer friends all over the globe. She is happily married and has four children.

Next poem: Giordano Bruno by Philip Baker