An Abiding Thread

Rita Mae Reese

You get a job in a can factory, 
in a restaurant, in retail;
work all day and sing all night
turning air 
into sweet sound and hope
with the woman who twines her voice with yours,
with the men who back you up,
and with all of those strangers who listen
and so you can’t settle 
down, can’t settle for less. 
You cancel your credit cards
and give up on owning a house;
you learn to believe more in a picket line
than a picket fence.

You become the patron saint of honky-tonk angels 
who came from make-do and get-by,
who worked for county dispatch, sold Avon,
sold junk on the side of the road, sold
things they shouldn’t and sometimes stuff 
they didn’t even own, but hasn’t everyone? 

You watch your sisters
get trapped, work as domestics
in the boss’s house and then in their own,
their marriages a union 
without any union to back them up
watch your brothers struggle
to get air—the last free thing
in this world—and when they can’t, 
leave behind a body and no money to bury it.
Every day more men and women 
deep in debt and out of breath.
You swear one day you’ll live to see it—
the air free again 
and every single one of us every bit as free.