working man - poem #53

This must have been how it was;
peering down from a hillside orchard
to see Reggio or Napoli
shining below for the last time

looking like acres of clean cardboard
as he walked away with what he could carry;
hard bread for the journey
lira for his ticket, an address on a small piece of paper

which lead him to the Number 9 coal shaft
in Pittsfield Pennsylvania
where the black dust followed him home
seeping through the windows, mapping his hands

invisibly coating his wife and children,
she living her life by the stove and
her round washing machine
he a living lunch pail headed for the shaft at the last shadow of night

his kids wasting away in the one room school
dozing like all  coal boys learning to be the next generation of cogs,
never finding the joy of long division
or what those books were really all about

while the poets Studs and Sandburg and Steinbeck died
and no one spoke of the working man anymore
save pols on Labor Day
droning on about the dignity of work they would never do

And of the glorious heritage of that working man
nothing is left
save a fig tree he was lovingly tending
the day his lungs gave out.

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