Photo: by Rene Menson, Emmen, the Netherlands.

Invisible Work by Alison Luterman

Because no one could ever praise me enough,

because I don’t mean only these poems but the unseen

unbelievable effort it takes to live

the life that goes on between them,

I think all the time about invisible work,

about the single mother on welfare I talked to

years ago, who said, “It’s hard.

You bring him to the park, run rings

around yourself keeping him safe,

cut hot dogs into bite-sized pieces for dinner, and there’s no one

to say what a good job you’re doing, how you were

patient and loving for the ten

thousandth time, even though you had a headache.”

And I, who am used

to feeling sorry for myself because I am lonely

when all the while, as the Chippewa

poem says, I am being carried

by great winds across the sky,

think of the invisible work that stitches up the world

day and night, the slow, unglamorous

work of healing, the way worms in the garden

tunnel ceaselessly so the earth can breathe and bees

enter and leave their lovers like exhausted Don Juans while owls

and poets stalk shadows, our

loneliest labors under the moon. There are mothers

for everything, and the sea

is a mother too,

whispering and whispering to us long

after we have stopped

listening. I stop and let myself lean

a moment against the blue

shoulder of the air. The work

of my heart

is the work of the world’s

heart. There is no other art.

Photo: by R osie Fisher-Boger, Lyons, Ohio. 

Artwork: by Pablo Picasso, "Blue Nude," Barcelona, Spain.

Needlework: by Eileen Williams, Crystal Coast, North Carolina.