Shiftless

I love writers who take ordinary things and make homely vignettes with words. That's what
Raymond Carver did in his poems. His poems remind me so much of my own Raymond...Raymond Miller, my dad.  He and I used to drive along River Road in Ferndale; him with a beer between his knees, and me sipping on a bottle of Orange Crush. We'd stop now and then to see if guys with names like 'Lucky', or 'Shorty', had caught anything out of the river. Then we'd drive out to the reservation and sit with one of his Native friends on the porch. His friend whittled. Few words; only the sound of a knife scraping wood and the cap popping off another beer, and an Orange Crush for me. 

Dad would've liked this poem.



 Shiftless                      by Raymond Carver

The people who were better than us were comfortable.
They lived in painted houses with flush toilets.
Drove cars whose year and make were recognizable.
The ones worse off were sorry and didn't work.
Their strange cars sat on blocks in dusty yards.
The years go by and everything and everyone gets replaced.
But this much is still true-I never liked work.
My goal was always to be shiftless.
I saw the merit in that.
I liked the idea of sitting in a chair in front of your house
for hours,
doing nothing but wearing a hat and drinking cola.
What's wrong with that?
Drawing on a cigarette from time to time.
Spitting.
Making things out of wood with a knife.
Where's the harm there?
Now and then calling the dogs to hunt rabbits.
Try it sometime. Once in a while hailing a fat, blond kid like me and saying, "Don't I know you?" Not, "What are you going to be when you grow up?"