The father was a carrier
He had five buckets
How did he carry it all in those five buckets?
And the men on the ship. They were all carriers,
heads & backs & shoulders—Lonely, father,
little brothers, I miss you. So. Heavy-laden.
Jean Valentine
Jean Valentine is the author of nine books of poetry, including Door in the Mountain, New & Collected Poems (Wesleyan, 2004). She has been a Guggenheim Fellow and was awarded the Shelley Memorial Prize by the Poetry Society of America in 2000. She lives in New York City.
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