Hobo

He was a man marked out to roam

Still in his teens when he leaves home

Boots on his feet clothes on his back

All he needs in his old rucksack

 

Along footpaths and country lanes

Walks everywhere sunshine or rain

Nothing he wants nothing he lacks

All he needs in his old rucksack

 

Up mountains high down valleys low

To any place on earth he’ll go

From north to south from east to west

By a wanderlust possessed

 

He’ll get a job if he has to

And earn enough to see him through

A long time since he slept in bed

With pillow soft beneath his head

 

Until he dies he’ll ramble round

Sky for a roof his bed the ground

Born to be free sun on his back

All he needs in his old rucksack

 

@ rowland paul hill  30 August 2019 v.6

(Inspired in part by hobos/travelers

Leon Ray Livingstone and Jack London

Maria Jimenez: In the fields of Lodi

from Nopalera they crossed the border

to Sacramento: Maria, her brother,

and her love Florentino, to work nearby

in the fields of Lodi.

 

from morning first light

picking the grapes

hauling huge crates

-no rest, no water –

till last thing at night.

 

temperature rose Into the forties, sun

burned like a furnace in a blue sky,

thirsty and suffering from heat exhaustion

Maria collapsed in the fields of Lodi.

 

though Florentino fought hard to revive

her, she fell in a coma; didn’t survive.

just two days later, and two months with child,

Maria Jimenez, in hospital, died.

 

her co-workers marched to Sacramento

demanding answers for why she had died,

carrying a casket for each of two victims;

one for Maria; one for her unborn child.

 

said Maria’s mother, in Nopalera,

venting her anger, her family’s ire,

“she travelled by foot, came back

in a coffin, after working three days

in the fields of Lodi.”

 

@ rowland paul hill

First draft 10 June 2008
This draft   11  November 2019

 Maria died in May 2008. Finally, in 2019, her employers were convicted of employment violations 

Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez, 17, collapses after laboring more than nine hours without accessible shade or water. She dies two days later. 

https://ufw.org/Chronology-on-heat-death-of-Maria-Isabel-Vasquez-Jimenez/

https://peoplesworld.org/article/17-year-olds-death-from-excessive-heat-may-lead-to-law-protecting-workers