Often I saw Hong Kong workers
erect spidery bamboo scaffolds,
high rising exoskeletons
casing forty floors or more
in lashed-together reedy lace.

Feet shod only in soft soled
grocery store canvas that kids wore,
the spider men spread vast
lattices of hollow poles
like weavers threading space,

perhaps sewing the face
of a building, hemming windows,
or creating new stories
beneath webby scaffold shirts.
Such perilous grace

of beltless bodies hung
on thin squares of lines,
playing dare with gravity
while constructing change.

My thin lines, thin soles.
What work below?
What risk of fall, of rise?