Warren Pryor by Alden Nowlan

When every pencil meant a sacrifice

his parents boarded him at a school in town,

slaving to free him from the stony fields,

the meagre acreage that bore them down.

They blushed with pride when, at his graduation,

they watched him picking up the slender scroll,

his passport from the years of brutal toil

and lonely patience in a barren hole.

When he went in the Bank their cups ran over.

They marvelled how he wore a milk-white shirt

work days and jeans on Sundays. He was saved

from their thistle-strewn farm and its red dirt.

And he said nothing. Hard and serious

like a young bear inside his teller`s cage,

his axe-hewn hands upon the paper bills

aching with empty strength and throttled rage.