by Stewart Alter
There’s an expectation about childhood
jobs which, when I had my first one,
I didn’t catch onto, as I dragged
a net at the end of a long pole
around the rectangle
of a swimming pool
skimming the water
removing the inkblot bugs
in the bungalow colony
my uncle owned.
Back and forth, back and forth,
I was supposedly starting to learn
about the grown-up world,
but I kept looking over my shoulder
envying my friends just hanging out
while they were talking about me
resenting my quarter-a-day job
secured through a family connection.
I didn’t work as long
as I was supposed to,
didn’t stretch for the hard-to-reach
insects lying dead among leaves
in the center of the pool,
and unless the lesson was
you didn’t have to finish a job
to still get paid
I didn’t learn much
about the real world.
When I felt I was through I’d take the pole
to the fence surrounding the pool
to shake the net clean into the tall grass.
The caught flies and mosquitoes
lay across the net
like black specks scattered
in a painting by Miro.
I think he would have
gotten more out of the job than I did.
Stewart Alter, who joined LP2 in the Fall of 2020, has been contributing poems to Voices since 2021.