Poem: Repair Job

Repair Job

You poor woman
in your mansion and estate
regret my every minute
at the labor rate.

You quiver
so pretty, so pale
as I, hairy male
hammer home
each pointed nail.

In my book Son of a Poet, published in 1986, I wrote:

You poor woman
in your house worth half a million...

It seemed like a fortune at the time. Here's a lesson in why actual money should never appear in poetry. Where I work in the Silicon Valley, half a million these days, even post-bubble, would barely buy a scraper in a bad neighborhood. In the rewrite, the poem is bubble-proof. And depression-proof.

© Joe Cottonwood 2009