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One Black Mark

By Dave Connolly

At 14, I delivered groceries to the neighborhood;
It was a real job, in the retail clerk's union
And I did a good job for them and my neighbors,
proud of being a union man.

At 16, I was hired as a regular in the store, throwing stock,
a member of the same union, got a letter of commendation
for crashing through the front door
with the escaping thief I tackled.

At 18, the phone company hired me
To climb poles and string wire
for Ma Bell, my neighbors and the IBEW.
My brothers on the job voted me their union steward.

At 48, I left the company to retirement
To look back on a life spent as a working man,
mostly in the city of my birth,
and found just one black mark.

See, when I was 19 and 20, I had a non-union job.
The only one I ever had,
In the infantry of the US Army,
and my job, killing Vietnamese, I did well.

But the medals and badges they gave me
didn't make what I did right,
and without a union card in my pocket,
I should have known better.

Dave Connolly