Factory Workers on Their Way to Work by Ruth Holzer

Factory Workers on Their Way to Work by Helene Schjerfbeck

Factory Workers on Their Way to Work

(after the painting by Helene Schjerfbeck)

Their faces pale with fatigue, 

their downcast eyes empty,

in pre-dawn darkness two women

hurry to their shift at the woolen mill.

All day they’ll stand at the spinning machines

surrounded by a racket of gears grinding,

pulleys whining, and the ceaseless clatter of the looms 

echoing around the brick walls.

They’ll inhale dust and fibers,

exhale another scrap of themselves

until the thin twined threads

of their lives fray and break.  

© Ruth Holzer

Ruth Holzer

Ruth Holzer has written ten chapbooks, most recently On the Way to Man in Moon Passage (Dancing Girl Press) and Float (Kelsey Books). Her poems have appeared in Blue Unicorn, California Quarterly, Freshwater, POEM, Slant, and elsewhere. She is a multiple Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee.

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