The Contractor Who Said No

The Contractor Who Said No

He said no to the bid that would have made the decade comfortable,
He said no because the spec was wrong and the structure troubled,
His professional conscience and his code-trained engineer eye,
He said no and walked away and that is where I rely.

The contractor who said no when the money said yes,
The contractor who said no and accepted the duress,
Of the lost contract and the whisper network around the trade,
The contractor who said no is how the real ones are made.

He lost three years of referral from the network that he spurned,
He worked the smaller jobs and kept the principle he earned,
At twenty years of building things that people put their lives inside,
The contractor who said no has the right to his full pride.

It came back around, as it usually does in the long run,
The developer went bankrupt when the bad spec came undone,
And the contractor who said no was the one they called to fix,
The mess that the yes men left in their profitable mix.