Another story about a poem. Here's the YouTube video if you want to listen: https://youtu.be/Zy4C_kL6SRw At the time that I wrote Rush Rush, I was packaging apples, peaches, tomatoes and greens. I worked for a fruit farmer who dabbled in vegetables. Long days, and little pay, but I enjoyed it. It was a family farm. Good people, honest work. And they let me park my little travel trailer next to the house that they maintained for the migrant workers that they imported from Central America. The migrant workers came to the United States on a special short-term Visa. And when the farmer was done with them, they would be shipped back to Central America. They had it worse, I thought, being so far from home. But then I laughed as I looked around myself. I was not so different from them. I too was away from home. Though I lived an hour away, I could not afford the commute, and so I had brought my little travel trailer. And I lay there alone in the dark, because the lights didn’t work, and listened to the music and the chatter that drifted over the rock wall from the house. At least I could I could go home on the weekends, I thought. Yes, we were the same, the migrant workers and I, each of us working hard for our little paycheck, and sending it home to the ones we loved, and each of us endlessly chasing the dream of a little security that never came. The likelihood was that in a year from now, we’d be doing the same thing or something similar, and two years from now, and ten, until we couldn’t do it anymore. And I wondered how many of the masses of men had lived their lives that way. And as I contemplated these things, I was struck by the futility of it all. And I wrote this poem. And as I wrote it, an image came to mind of a sea captain bellowing at a bunch of peasants as they dragged a boat along a water way by ropes. Later, when I was looking for an image to attach to the poem, I found a painting by Ilya Repin called Barge Haulers on the Volga. It turns out that that was actually a thing. Russian peasants were hired to pull boats upstream on the Volga River. Who would have known?! Barge Haulers on the Repin by Ilya Repin (1873)
Rush Rush Said the Captain, The Son of a Captain, Whose Father was Captain before We drive for the Nethermost edge of the world Where we'll meet The great captains of yore. We are told That they wait us Where ne'r a hiatus Is known on that distant black shore. But the devil will greet us And slyly entreat us With the lie Just a little bit more.
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