The Work We Do Shapes Who…

Augustus Saint-Gaudens

The Work We Do Shapes Who…

what I can’t lose is the feeling that things are

taken away because I haven’t understood

the right way to hold them close.

                                                                                Mark Halliday

                                                                                64 Elmgrove

My father worked like work was the only thing

that could save him.  Our father.  I should

say our father.  But doesn’t that sound too much

like the prayer we say at mass before we shake

everybody’s hand, or like what we’re bringing up

is a longing to go home to a home that’s no more

there and never was but what we don’t know

hiding under the bed from her or running

away to the woods from her or watching our

favorite cartoons when she was gone up

the road and would be back soon enough soused

is we are making it any way we can make it

and we got it easy compared to some

and while I’m not glad they hurt those some

I am humbled to know they kept going

on past their burned up or run over sons

and daughters, kept moving like they were loco-

motives, like they had track to lay

and rails to ride on out of this place.  Sorry

you don’t get this missing work

like you do now, or getting laid off or quitting

when the dust kicks up in your face and Jesus

is all you can say.  What I want to know, aside

from when you’re coming home, is when

it all began to go wrong—maybe it was I hid

you first and went in after you

and we laid side by side like the dead

soldiers we played all the time though less

and less as we needed more secret places

to hide.  And while that’s all predictable, everybody

grows up you tell me later, it’s something in the way I crawl

out into the light again with her standing

above me and I’ve touched you before I left

and stood in front of her saying no I’m not sure

where he is and you didn’t make a sound

when she grabbed me by the hair, taking me up

and away from the floor, lifting my skin

from my scalp bone and showing me: meat

needing the blood to be squeezed out, to be fried

in weeks old bacon grease, and then the mason

jar of green beans she’d chucked in the sink, the fog

of the liquor in it the quietest ghost in the room

and I held my breath listening to the suck and smack

of the breath that’s the only way to know if all

the work’s either spoiled or edible, it was everything

we’d gathered one summer, or the summer before

that, or the summer before that.  All the work we did.

Except you, and maybe it was that place I’d failed

the most, maybe it was me coming out first

and telling you to pretend, pretend you’re a little dead

soldier and I’ll take her down

stairs and find you another way to sneak out-

side so you can sneak back in, pretending

you’re just like him, coming back

late from working, supper a lump, a sleeping

person who can’t be waked for it.