The Museum of Work

It is a museum, history in a way. Shakers
and the way they live.

It is the washroom and nothing about it is pristine
or pretty. It shows it for what it was. Work.

Work is rarely pretty. Tools and dirt and shards
of wood and metal and heart scatter like litter.

There are false starts and mistakes.
The effort wears callouses on our hands and souls.

We find ourselves with cracked palms
and fissures in our peace. At times, we want to stop

or palm it off to someone else, Sawyer style.
And yet, in the end, the work is ours to do.

And ours to reap the perfection of finishing,
no matter how perfect, or not, the final product may be,

it is ours.

About this poem

About day-to-day work. About soul work. It’s always ours.

Tom