If you had watched my father,
who had been peddling boxes for fifty years,
working the phones again at a common desk,
if you had listened to him sweet-talking
the newly minted assistant buyer at Seagram's
and swearing a little under his breath,
if you had sweated with him on the docks
of a medical supply company
and heard him boasting, as I did,
that he had to kiss some strange asses,
if you had seen him dying out there,
then you would understand why I stood
at his grave on those wintry afternoons
and stared at the bare muddy trees
and raved in silence to no one,
to his name carved into a granite slab.
Cold calls, dead accounts.