The Way Philanthropy Works
  
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At concerts in Rockefeller Center 
sensitive ears can still hear the cries and wails 
of the Ludlow miners
and their wives and children 
slaughtered on the picket line in Colorado, 1914.

Without opening a book,
keen eyes can read 
the lost lives of unschooled steel workers
on the facades of thousands of  libraries,
part of the Carnegie bequest. 

And who remembers
the abandoned artistic ambitions 
of the aluminum smelters, the oil riggers,
and the bank tellers who labored 
so the Mellon family could endow 
the National Gallery of Art?




Fences

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There used to be more sides in the world. 
Grandpa’s barn had four good sides 
before it went down in a storm in ’87.
Grandpa, too, had sides, a good one and a bad one.
They both went down in ’63. 

When Uncle Jim took a steer to market, 
there were two sides of beef, 
a side in his freezer, a side in ours.

There used to be shorter fences 
in back yards 
and neighbors on each side 
talking to each other. 
And if they ever mentioned sides,
it wasn’t to say, you’re on the wrong side. 

There was your side and my side, but we talked. 

And politics? Jesus,
there were all kinds of sides 
and lots of middle ground 
in the town square. 

Now sides are taken, not shared. 

Newsmen boast about reporting both sides of the story, 
as if there were always only two.

There used to be a sunny side of the street, 
a few dead ends, 
but every street with a sunny side, 
not just Park Avenue.

Can you remember?
Can you even imagine it now?
Every street with a sunny side 
and all you had to do was cross over.