Muscle Beach
Los Angeles
California
An old man on his back
on the weight bench
shoves iron into the sky.
The iron does not like being disturbed.
Its allegiance is to the earth
and it resents being pushed away.
Every chance it gets it races home.
The iron does not relax
until it is allowed to rest,
no longer embarrassed by
being hoisted by a frail human hand.
But the bony hand remembers
its repeated defeats of the iron,
as an aged champion recalls
the bouts of his youth
through aches and scars.
2011