The Pick by Cecilia Woloch : American Life in Poetry #236 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006

Cecilia Woloch teaches in California, and when she’s not with her students she’s off to the Carpathian Mountains of Poland, to help with the farm work.  But somehow she resisted her wanderlust just long enough to make this telling snapshot of her father at work.
The Pick

I watched him swinging the pick in the sun,