These come:  soft-handed men in suits,
acquaintances who never smelled
my father’s grease-smeared work clothes.
They talk loud with one another,
shake hands, slap backs like candidates
at the barbeque fundraiser.
They toil at polished desks in cuff-
linked shirts, play golf at private clubs
on lawns of bottle green, float down
the Tennessee in canopied
pontoon boats for football games.  

And these come:  sons of sawmillers,
cattle and tobacco farmers. The sun
has ironed their necks, spotted
their foreheads.  Their ropy arms hang
from short-sleeved shirts their wives
have pressed in kitchens smelling of bacon.
They’d rather be in worksheds crammed
with busted machines, paint cans stacked
like pyramids, jelly jars jammed
with tenpennies, sinkers, and bolts
that ground their lives against leaving.