To be of use

Aug 21

I currently work as a nurse in a hospital near my home. Like most institutions in our society, this one has complex hierarchies of power, salary, and status. These hierarchies imply that that some members of the institution are more valued than others: physicians more than nurses, patient care techs more than orderlies, and those who work at desks more than those who clean floors and serve meals.

But I’ve never worked a shift without being reminded of the critical importance of all these roles and of the beautiful, transformative differences people throughout the institution can make by doing our work with commitment and compassion.

As Marge Piercy suggests in this poem, there is no job that is inherently more valuable than any other. “The thing worth doing well done” may be as common as mud or as exalted as gold—the value of it comes from the heart with which it is done and its usefulness to others.

To be of use

by Marge Piercy

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

From the collection, Circles on the Water (Knopf Doubleday, 1982)