Laborer
my work is not as I could
and not as I would
work myself
at night I go to a little private
door in a wall
and through a narrow place
and into a box
Poèmes sur le thème : work
Poèmes sur le thème « work » sur Poets.by.
Grownup
When I was a boy we used to play
at sea, that first music.
So has business taken me
from all my former delights.
I am quit of any obligation
to my missing key.
My hand writes me from
the country of temper.
Singular
I used to wake without my work
without a double all day
sitting in me
Wage
Work is a great garden of money
which will come up
in the chest, a place
with no water or land
where I glut myself on fear.
An ordinary garden demands joy
like a cook committed to folly,
but not money, which is such
a perfect version of death.
It needs to keep increasing,
the whole good night
full of miracle.
Salaryman
I lock my use up in work
to own the top troubles.
Think of my office:
an all-afternoon coop.
I count to go to bed.
Finished
A hat to
the office here,
I end my contract,
making an abstract home of the night.
Prospector
I find cries
where they were words:
in a lung.
I give the remains to a book,
work all night.
Legacy
Having been a dog
I sleep in Greek,
say I believe in
supper, not work.
A Piece of Paper
What you work for,
What you all need,
Unable to fully function,
Unable to live without me,
To go out and eat,
Drink at a bar,
To rent a house,
Own a car,
To raise your kids,
Provide them education,
To give them shelter,
Provide them opportunity,
Causing you great stress,
Providing you tremendous joy,
Able to destroy your life,
Able to make you see another day,
Monday Syndrome
In the fleeting moments that fall
In between fleeing from one task to another
At the back of my mind, desparate, I wonder
How to freeze Time to an eternal Sunday!
A Time to Talk
When a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don’t stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven’t hoed,
And shout from where I am, ‘What is it?’
No, not as there is a time to talk.
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
Blade-end up and five feet tall,
And plod: I go up to the stone wall
For a friendly visit.
Aid
At her western window, she's stitching.
The needle pricks her sometimes. She moves
Her hand aside to not bleed on silk.
Even as she works, her waxed thread in
Rows appearing like commas, she sees a
Western meadowlark pounce in tall grass
Ever growing, unmowed, outside. When
She stops, peering over thick lenses
To note the meadowlark has a grub, to her
Ears come, faintly, short songs of its mate.
Reaching for her scissors, she snips a tail,
Nudges it out of sight behind a stitch.
When this row is done, she'll ask her mate
If it will do. If not, she'll turn her mother's
Needle and pull thread, loop by loop
Down to the place her mind wandered.