1. Another Kind of Wealth
My prime was spent in sweat
lifting joists and studs
and sheets of ply
to second floors and roofs
lugging gypsum sheets
from there to there
building bones and musculature
of arms and legs and heart
through years,
through dust to dust,
a carpenter
in steel toed boots
Besides the bucks
I made in that
and managed
not to keep
I earned another kind of wealth:
my body stored
in blood and meat
the stuff that keeps
me now in health
(best things
don’t come
cheap)
Jim Culleny
4/25/18
