Purpose

Another Draft in the Work Series

After a few frustrating rounds of writer's block, here's another draft of the poem in the series on work. This is probably the last poem of the series that I'll post here as I start to delve into into with a bit more intent.

Purpose

A single percentage point reduction in unemployment increases predicted deaths from heart attack by about 1.3 percent.—From The National Bureau of Economic Research

l.

That we may prepare 

for a whole day of usefulness,

repeat: A heart without work 

weighs a third more. 

Even hands of the inert 

float towards the instinct
of production:

Knitting bag, flour and milk, stain and

raw wood. Even a dozing 

cat dreams back the hunt, bats 

at an absence of prey. It is not for us 

to court stillness, to tempt 

Winter and be idle during harvest. 

ll.

Mom priced product 

nights at Pic & Pac, furious 

about everything 

from Wrigley’s to Cascade. Once

she counted 

two hundred and six

brands of deodorant. “That’s just 

brands alone,” she seethed, “not 

counting stick or aerosol.”

Dad came home 

each night in uniform, 

scrawny and diesel-soaked, as Mom

shuffled to her bus. We weren’t 

to talk to him 

after his Hard Days. We understood 

completely. It took it 

out of him, those men 

with power, minor but absolute. 

Those men, with wordless

inscrutable wars, and 

everything at stake. 

My first job

was a paper route, three nights 

a week in all weather. I remember 

how important burden felt, the 

crushing pouch 

biting at my shoulders

as I stepped into the black of stars and snow. 

The relentless 

strain of it felt right, like 

this, indeed, was work.

Like this indeed, was what a living meant.     

lll.

A heart 

without work is a heart 

unleashed from usefulness,

freed

to grin up at God

who has perfected idleness. 

A heart without work is 

formless, no longer in waiting.

A heart

without work

can know itself only 

in its truest form: beautifully 

unsung and of no service.

--Kristen McHenry