Blue-collar & Admiration From a Kneeling Position

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show...(the opening lines of David Copperfield as written by Charles Dickens;inspired by MTM). Or at least this ACCOUNT will, perhaps, have a reflection on whether I'm going to be the hero in my own life.

...but she wears short skirts, I wear T-shirts
She's Cheer Captain and I'm on the bleachers
Dreaming about the day when you wake up and find
That what you're looking for has been here the whole time~~~Taylor Swift


I had posted this poem, the PipeFitter's Wife this last week, on FACEBOOK. On its own merits, I thought it warranted some reaction; some feedback. Nary a word.

What I draw from the poem, and the benign neglect, is that we as a culture and society can't come to terms with a couple of values anymore. We don't see the blue-collar laborer as an equal, or at least to give some recognition to. And we can't possibly identify with a woman, who in effect, admires her husband~~~from her knees. From this position she worships this man; blue-collar servant, as if he were her king.


THE PIPEFITTER'S WIFE:
I loved him most
when he came home from work,
his fingers still
curled from fitting pipe,
his denim shirt ringed with sweat
and smelling of salt, the drying weeds
of the ocean.
I would go to him where he sat

on the edge of the bed, his forehead
anointed with grease, his cracked hands
jammed between his thighs, and unlace
the steel-toed boots, stroke his ankles
his calves, the pads and bones of his feet.

Then I'd open his clothes and take
the whole day inside me-the ship's
gray sides, the miles of copper pipe,
the voice of the first man clanging
off the hull's silver ribs,

spark of lead
kissing metal, the clamp, the winch,
the white fire of the torch, the whistle
and the long drive home. Dorianne Laux

If that was my chosen path...

--{-=@
Hickok
The Promise