Bent into the night

Bent into the night, the yellow elbow of the hydraulic excavator catching a piece of streetlight. It's important to know who is singing on the radio, the name of the song, the kinds of trees passing in silhouette against the navy blue night. The song is a spiderweb I don't understand. The road lined with orange and white striped barrels. The white light up ahead, washing out the stars, is the sign of Mark Ford-Mercury. My mind is stuck on the excavator, that yellow elbow bent into the night. Slaps of dirt along its yellow boom and stick and bucket. Dirt-caked bucket like a hand of a dead man whose knuckles hang down to lightly rest on the ground. But that's not right. The elbow bent into the night is alive; a machine, a force of nature. Having dug into the earth, the bucket's a hand come to rest barely on a lover's shoulder. Hard as a look in the eyes, soft as the trace of a curve. If everything weren't a paradox, nothing would make sense. The traffic light ahead turning from yellow to red.