Placing a Help: Summer 1959 by Robert Demaree

The summer after college

I worked door to door:

An encyclopedia for kids,

In a hot textile town

In the Carolina hills.

Our bosses, ladies in New York

Who went by their initials,

Would not speak of selling books

But trained us to place a help,

To smile through lengthy texts well learned

And not protest if people thought

That we were from the school;

To listen calmly to souls

Who feared and distrusted

Those of different faith or hue

But, beyond that, meant no harm.

This was after Little Rock but before Selma.

I did all right, I guess.

The ladies had devised a game

To note and spur on our sales,

Baseball, and I was the catcher.

Years later I read that a boy from those

Dusty mill streets had shot his mother,

With whom I may have placed a help.

I spent most of what I made

At Mama Leone’s on a Friday night.

At the next table three New York clerics

Ate oysters and lobster thermador:

Did not seem much like fasting to me.