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What Work Is

Philip Levine

We stand in the rain in a long line

waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work.

You know what work is--if you're

old enough to read this you know what

work is, although you may not do it.

Forget you. This is about waiting,

shifting from one foot to another.

Feeling the light rain falling like mist

into your hair, blurring your vision

until you think you see your own brother

ahead of you, maybe ten places.

You rub your glasses with your fingers,

and of course it's someone else's brother,

narrower across the shoulders than

yours but with the same sad slouch, the grin

that does not hide the stubbornness,

the sad refusal to give in to

rain, to the hours wasted waiting,

to the knowledge that somewhere ahead

a man is waiting who will say, "No,

we're not hiring today," for any

reason he wants. You love your brother,

now suddenly you can hardly stand

the love flooding you for your brother,

who's not beside you or behind or

ahead because he's home trying to

sleep off a miserable night shift

at Cadillac so he can get up

before noon to study his German.

Works eight hours a night so he can sing

Wagner, the opera you hate most,

the worst music ever invented.

How long has it been since you told him

you loved him, held his wide shoulders,

opened your eyes wide and said those words,

and maybe kissed his cheek? You've never

done something so simple, so obvious,

not because you're too young or too dumb,

not because you're jealous or even mean

or incapable of crying in

the presence of another man, no,

just because you don't know what work is.

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This poem is by a man named Phillip Levine, from 
a National Book Award-winning collection of the same name. He grew up in and
around Detroit, Michigan, as have I. He writes brilliantly and beautifully
about the oft criticized as dirty and hopeless city, it’s groaning factories,
and the people working its industries. He’s able to shed a heroic and noble
light upon the great people of that city. 
	When I tell people out here I grew up around Detroit, people usually don’t say 
much, but give me glances that look as though
they have just eaten a lemon, or even worse, look disapprovingly at me like a
mother who knows her son is up to no good but can’t stick him with any
particular offence. In almost all cases, people have not smelled the sulfur of
the river rouge steel mill, or seen Diego Rivera’s epic murals. They haven’t
grown up listening to Bob Seeger, MC5, and the White Stripes. And they haven’t
been downtown to a community concert to become part of the supple and turbulent
organism dancing in the street to save the city. It’s true, Detroit is dying.
The auto industry has all but left, Chrysler is getting thrown around like a
tennis ball, and the city is a rusted shell of what it once was. 
	But it’s the people who keep it alive. There are very few places in America where
people are trying harder to save what they have earned, and known, and lived
for years, while the rest of the country scoffs at what they perceive as the
filth of Detroit. Next time someone brings up Detroit, remember the beauty of
this poem, and Rivera’s noble murals. Think, just for a second that there may
be more than crime, and poverty, and the ravages of the absent auto industry,
but there may be people working hard to save their piece of America.

-Drew