Sweat of My Brow A poem on the nobility of work in technological age. ==special note== What value this? To what end these? To sort, to scan, to type the keys, To file, to phone, to read the mail, To meet, to melt as air grows stale? Were we not naked once, and wild? Deeds and natures reconciled? Did not our fathers' backs and hands Raise up these walls, restore these lands? Were I set free to tread the field -- Shirt off my back -- and bravely wield The scythe, the sword, the wheel, the plow, Would I wish for...what I do now? I sit, I sort, I think, I plan. Do these things make me less a man? Do strain, grit, struggle, sweat and toil, To split the block and turn the soil, Make me more noble, or just tired? I need to know -- I've just been fired.

©1997 Squeaky Toy Music

SPECIAL NOTE

On Sunday, July 14, 2002, this poem was read on National Public Radio's The Next Big Thing. The program is hosted on New York's leading NPR station, WNYC, by Dean Olsher. The show ran twice, at 11 AM and 1 PM. Reading the poem was Alice Quinn, president of the Poetry Society of America (PSA) and poetry editor for the New Yorker Magazine.

The poem was chosen from over 400 entries to represent the Adult category of the Poetry in Motion Contest, sponsored by the PSA. Winning poems appear on NYC MTA subways and buses, along with the likes of Tennyson and Hopkins.

Alas, the poem did not win the overall contest.

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