When I watched a documentary on factory workers

in China
I wept
less than three dollars
for fourteen hours
I think of Ginsberg's America
his two-dollars-thirty-seven-cents
this was the girl's bright future
a girl my age
twenty-one this was her
better life
away from the farm her parents keep
with arthritic knuckles
sunrise to set sunrise to
set
they believe
our American dream

I read once that a liter
of diesel fuel
does the work of a thousand
hands
how many now
hang idle
like the stars glittering in the gap
between now and later between
someone else's world
and mine

littering the road
or stepping stones to
salvation