i saw a lineman/Indian Head Penny

on the drive home from the gym i saw a lineman
     I once had a penny
he was working from the ground like a boy with a part-bulldog kite
     It was over a hundred years old
his string a cable affixed to a toroidal cylinder
     On its obverse a headdressed “Noble Savage”
and as he pulled the bulldog slowly spun
     The headband inscribed “Liberty”
a spiderline of metal in a spiral around the line
     With nine feathers sprouting perpendicularly from it
and the spiderline gleamed against the dark of its captive
     And the Indian had a carefree smile as if Liberty was indeed nigh
as the orange-meshed lineman pulled steadily and firmly
     That year of their Lord 1859
and with the confident purpose of a man doing a just job

They are brothers in copper, the two men:
     sacred to a time,
Overlaid with the invention of a stumbling civilization,
     and “Indian” was never correct in the Western Hemisphere;
And “lineman” will someday go the way of “elevator operator;”
     and “Head” has come to alternately mean alternate-means recreation;
And strung wire is on its way out, as wireless comes to rule,
     and modern American pennies striking concrete sound, and are, worthless and false;
And Time brings a wind that whistles up ghosts.