[cranes] dancing across the sky

Interesting things happening across the road and I don't think I'd do them.

There are three tall houses being built and the eighteen story variant had men on the very top floor just now, being supplied by three cranes.

All very colourful and even graceful - a dance of tubular steel in gold, red and blue - wish I owned a camera. One arm of the mother crane was hovering over the baby crane, almost protecting it.

Another crane, presumably the daddy, carrying a metal grill across against the clouds, reached the concrete edge of the top floor, one worker leant over to pull it in and it looked to me as if he had no safety harness of any kind.

At least it would be mercifully quick.

On the ground are the foundations of whatever - jagged metal rods sticking vertically out of concrete blocks - and I couldn't help feeling that this called for some jaunty doggerel. So here is one I cobbled together just now:

Cranes in their natural habitat,
Motionless stand and wait;
An innocent workman approaches the edge,
Just metres form his fate.

The whir of the motor, the high crane swings;
He reaches out in space,
As five passing seagulls drop their load,
Hitting him in the face.

Spluttering, it briefly slips his mind -
His precariously positioned perch -
As he tumbles, clutching at the grill
And the crane gives a mighty lurch.

Swift as an eagle, the grill is dropped,
The workman hears no roar
As the grill swings back like a cricket bat
And he hits the 13th floor.

Hands frantically clutch, he's safely dragged;
They can see he'll live some more.
"Well, you'd best get back then," the foreman grunts;
He returns to the eighteenth floor.

Just looking over there again now and there's another madman striding across the steep roof of the little house above the top floor. Better man than I am, Gunga Din.