America, America... Poem by Eric Cockrell

i remember...
$1.55 an hour, furniture row,
55 hours a week.
getting up hay, milking cows,
and them cotton mills
we worked in...
family member to family member,
generations of workers.

no running water,
carrying buckets up the hill,
spiders on the outhouse wall.
the hoe, the shovel, and the plow.
reading by candle light,
and writing socialist manifestos
on a 1913 underwood typewriter!

making love in the front seat
of a 1966 Rambler Classic.
raising babies, raising hell,
renegade thoughts...
climbing mountains, picking music,
living, living, just living
and working!

America, America...
where did you go?