Showing posts with label Marge Piercy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Marge Piercy. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

How Hard Do You Work?

How hard do you work?  Would others around you agree?  What do peers think of you as a worker?  What do your parents think about your work ethic?   Do teachers see you as a student that works your hardest?  On a scale of 1 - 10, how would you score yourself as a worker?

As we study poetry in Reading Workshop, and look at To Be of Use , these questions came to mind.  This poem is a favorite of teachers because there is absolutely nothing teachers admire more than a hard worker.  This is also a character trait discussed frequently in Reading Workshop.


To Be of Use
Written by Marge Piercy

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,

who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge

in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.

Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.


Comments are allowed to be in the form of poetry.

Image from http://darrenhardy.success.com/2009/06/hardwork/