Just over 16, a cigarette smoking boy and a bit,
I spent the summer digging ditches,
And carrying heavy things
	at Bloomingdale School site.

I learned how a back-hoe works, and how to handle a shovel,
And multiple words not found in the dictionary.
Sullivan County, Tennessee, a buck twenty and hour,
1952.
	Worst job of my life, but I stuck it out.

Everyone else supported a family, not me.
I was the high school kid, and went home
Each night to my mother's cooking.
	God knows where the others went.

Mostly across the line into Scott County, Virginia, I think,
Appalachian appendix, dead end.
Slackers and multipliers, now in, now out of jail, on whom I
	depended.

Cold grace for them.
	God rest them all road ever they offended,

To rhyme a prominent priest.
	Without a ministry, without portfolio,

Each morning I sought them out
For their instructions, for their laying on of hands.
I wish I could say that summer changed my life,
	or changed theirs,

But it didn't. Apparently, nothing ever does.
I did, however, leave a skin there.
A bright one, I'm told, but less bright than its new brother.
	—Charles Wright