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© Paul Zarzyski. All rights reserved. These words may not be reprinted or reposted without the author's written permission.

Labor Day

“I came to America because I heard the streets
were paved with gold.  When I got here I found
out three things: first the streets were not paved
with gold, second they weren’t paved at all, and
third, I was expected to pave them.”

Italian Immigrant Quote—
Ellis Island Museum Wall

I spent my muscular blue-collar youth
pounding, prying, digging, lifting, hauling
ass for some wanna-be-god
boss who tallied-up the solid gold
hours of my prime, multiplied them
by a pittance, and pegged me
a hooked-in-the-gullet bottom-feeding
sucker for life.
                      Since, I’ve seen the lucre-green
Statue of Liberty up close, felt a chill
on Ellis Island where I strolled
the processing plant of my ancestors
off the boats from Italy,
from Poland, found Zarzycki, the old-
country spelling on the wall
and thought of soldiers first
setting foot in Nam.
                             Work is war
when it’s work punched in and out of
solely for the sake of making wages
to pay the sticker price
some stranger places on your dream
always a dollar out of reach. And war is never
won.
        This land is our land, alright,
and these words are my words,
not for money, but love. I sweated blood,
labored all day, have the calluses
on my heart, the rock-hard
broad shoulders of the poet’s soul
to show for them.
                          As my ironic father,
rowing his bass boat over ferrous waters,
cracked wise to a young son on the one Monday
morning he was free of the iron
ore mine toil all year, now I—
alone in the mist of these lines cast
wistfully into the shallows—also wonder
”what are the poor people doing today.”

For Tom Russell
In tribute to his “immigrant song
cycle” masterpiece, The Man from
God Knows Where.