"Trades"

I want to be a carpenter,

To work all day long in clean wood,

Shaving it into little this slivers

Which screw up into curls behind my plane;

Pounding square, black nails into white boards,

With the claws of my hammer glistening

Like the tongue of a snake.

I want to shingle a house,

Sitting on a ridgepole, in a bright breeze.

I want to put the shingles on neatly,

Taking great care that each is directly between two others.


I want my hands to have the tang of wood;

Spruce, cedar, cypress.

I want to draw a line on a board with a flat pencil,

And then saw along that line,

With the sweet-smelling sawdust piling up in a yellow heap at my feet.

That is the life I want to be! Heigh-ho!

Sleet and shift for the slippery climb,

How they stop a fire, or tinker a tire – and pull into town on time.


The city takes, and it goes its way, and the great dark hulks reload,

While mechanics grease; and test, and check, to make them safe for the road;

Then the crates are stacked and the boxes packed and the padding placed – and then

The tailboards slam, and the trailers ram, and the great trucks roll again!