I worked a day laborer's job
as moving man
and carried box after box
of books
out of a professor's house
and into a truck
on a tree-lined street
in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
The guy working with me
took it easy
and carried about half of what
I did
and at one point I told him
to get a move-on
and he looked at me like I was
crazy
and maybe I was
and late in the afternoon
the truck driver gave me shit
for slowing down
and I went off on him,
a screaming fit,
and he blanched
and said that he knew
what my problem was
and he handed me an extra ten
but
lack of money was not
my real problem--
the world was.
___
Wayne Burke's work has appeared in FORGE, miller's pond, and Northeast Corridor. He was poet-of-the-month in Bareback, 7-13.
