“Casual Labor” by Sandy Solomon

The man at the front door wants work,

any job. Hand on the knob, I start 

to turn him down, to swing the door’s weight

to, but then I consider my mother’s mother.

In Rock Island during the Depression, her daughters 

said, she shared the family’s meals with men

who daily knocked to ask for food or work,

her own husband jobless and looking, 

but the garden producing, the children usually fed

(stews from the broad beans beside their garage, 

the latticed tomatoes and peas down the back, 

and, out of black, turned ground, the potatoes, 

the carrots). Those who have the least will often

give the most, I tell myself, and shame 

on the rest of us, on me. So, I find a task—