July 18, 2025: “The Ferryer,” Day Off, “Bussing Tables at the Elks Club Fish Fry: A Love Story”

I took the day off work.  

That doesn’t mean I slept in or sat on my couch all day, napping and watching reruns of Northern Exposure.  No, I took my puppy for a few walks, read a book, wrote some poems and blog posts, practiced some church music.  My daughter messaged me at one point, and we had a lovely text conversation, catching up on her new life downstate.  (Yes, I did cry a little after the conversation ended.)

So, you see, even if I’m not officially working, I still work.  Tomorrow I plan to mow my lawn and work on a new poem.  I’ll probably end up doing a couple loads of laundry, too.  

Sharon Olds writes about a job her dead father works . . .

The Ferryer

by: Sharon Olds

Three years after my father's death
he goes back to work. Unemployed
for twenty-five years, he's very glad
to be taken on again, shows up
on time, tireless worker. He sits
in the prow of the boat, sweet cox, turned
with his back to the carried. He is dead, but able
to kneel upright, facing forward
toward the other shore. Someone has closed
his mouth, so he looks more comfortable, not
thirsty or calling out, and his eyes
are open—under the iris, the black
line that appeared there in death. He is calm,
he is happy to be hired, he's in business again,
his new job is a joke between us and he
loves to have a joke with me, he keeps
a straight face. He waits, naked,
ivory bow figurehead,
ribs, nipples, lips, a gaunt
tall man, and when I bring people
and set them in the boat and push them off
my father poles them across the river
to the far bank. We don't speak,
he knows that this is simply someone
I want to get rid of, who makes me feel
ugly and afraid. I do not say
the way you did. He knows the labor
and loves it. When I dump someone in, he 

does not look back, he takes them straight
to hell. He wants to work for me
until I die. Then, he knows, I will
come to him, get in his boat
and be taken across, then hold out my broad
hand to his, help him ashore, we will
embrace like two who were never born,
naked, not breathing, then up to our chins we will
pull the home blanket of earth and
rest together, at the end of the working day.

I read this poem and think to myself, Jesus, even when you die you still have to work!

I like being busy and productive.  There’s a difference, however, between working a midnight shift at Walmart and pursuing a dream.  Since I was very young, I’ve wanted to be a successful, published author.  I majored in English as an undergraduate (along with computer science and math); received advanced degrees in both fiction and poetry writing; and published two collections of poems (so far).  I’ve also been writing this blog for over ten years, and I currently receive approximately 150,000 to 250,000 page views a day.  (On Wednesday, my page views were 1.3 million for the day.)  

I work hard on my writing—at least two or three hours a day, usually more.  But it doesn’t feel like work.  I enjoy sitting down with my journal or laptop.  It doesn’t stress me out like, say, correcting a pile of student papers or practicing music for church. Language has always been my friend, confidant, and therapist. 

There was a time when writers had patrons—wealthy landowners or royalty. Patrons supported the writers financially, and all the writers had to do was . . . write.  An amazing concept, I know.  Rewarding people for doing what they’re really good at.  That doesn’t mean I want to go back in time to Elizabethan England.  (Not a big fan of bubonic plague.)

But I also don’t want to work shitty jobs until the day I die.  (I’ve had my share of occupations that really didn’t suit me—plumber’s apprentice, busboy, medical records clerk.)  Eventually, I’d like not to have three to five jobs at the same time.  I don’t want to be physically and mentally exhausted at the end of every day.  I don’t think that’s too much to ask.

So, if any of my disciples knows a rich person with a penchant for literature, send them my way.

Saint Marty wrote a poem for today about a shitty job I once had, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet . . . 

On this date in 1955, Weldon Kees’ Plymouth Savoy was found on the north side of the Golden Gate Bridge, the keys in the ignition.  Though he’d talked of starting a new life in Mexico, most presumed suicide.  Since that day, Kees has increasingly become a cult figure among poets, his poems admired for their earnest intensity and their facility with everyday speech.  In one of his poems, Kees describes corporate jobs as Siberias with bonuses, places where the fire roared and died.  Do you now have or did you once have a job where the phoenix quacked like a goose?  What were your duties?  What specifically about the job made you long to call in sick?  Write a poem in everyday speech about a job you once had.

Bussing Tables at the Elks Club Fish Fry: A Love Story

by: Martin Achatz

Every Friday night, I came home smelling

like the sea and cigarette smoke,

pockets crammed with my share

of tip money—sweaty quarters,

bitter dimes, dollar bills wadded

up like old Kleenexes.  Enough to put

a couple gallons of gas in my tank

with a little left over for a bag

of weed.  It wasn’t glamorous work,

scraping shrimp tails, baked potato

scraps, cod skins, butts and ashes

into garbage cans, wiping down

tables slick with grease and melted

butter.  For at least two days after a shift,

I could still smell work on my skin,

as if I was a walking can of tuna.

I dated the dishwasher for a while,

although the relationship was doomed

from the start, both of us fresh out

of high school, too shy for anything

more than quick pecks, chapped 

lips pressed against chapped lips,

in the walk-in freezer when the cook

ran low on filets or French fries.

I broke up with her after I dreamed

one night she was a mermaid swimming

in a pool of tartar sauce.  I still can’t eat

at Red Lobster without thinking

of her breasts cupped in seashells,

hair wild with kelp and ocean waves.