They wait at the gates
in flannel shirts and heavy denim pants.
They wait for the gates to open,
the whistle to blow
signaling change of shift.
They wait for the mill jobs
to come back, with wages
that will feed a family,
wages to be proud of.
They wait in the parking lot
where one-stop shoppers
now, twenty-five years later,
look through them like ghosts.
They wait in a rain
of gadgets and plunder,
companies from somewhere else
picking their pockets
trying to sell them everything
they don’t need at bargain prices.
They wait for the world
to make sense again,
where calluses grow on your hands
and the soreness in your back
means you’re worth a damn.
From Writers’ Almanac, Friday, October 12, 2007
Poem: “Men at the Gates” by Gary L. Lark, from Men at the Gates.
© Finishing Line Press, 2007. Reprinted with permission.