Most of my poems, if you know my poems, you'll know are longer,
and most of them, even the short ones,
started off as two or three pages.
And this one was this very long narrative.
And I cut it down to about 11, 12 lines.
"The Museum of Work."
"Black high-topped leather boots as
new as when a Polish soldier broke them in,
September, 1939, running toward a German tank,
then wised up and ran back home and hid
them under the chicken coop.
His son wore them across the ocean.
They walked him to school.
They pushed the pedal of a big dump truck.
And in those boots, he bought three more trucks, then sat
for 40 years in a cramped office like an American
doing the numbers that made the money we
call the great American success story.
A pair of boots--
humiliated in war and redeemed by work now on display
in the museum of work next to the ladders.