Sometimes I'd spend the whole night coughing up <br />what I'd been breathing in all day at work. <br />I'd sleep in a chair or take a good stiff drink, <br />anything to get a few hours rest. <br /> <br />The doctor called it asthma and suggested <br />I find a different line of work as if <br />a man who had no land or education <br />could find himself another way to live. <br /> <br />For that advice I paid a half-day's wage. <br />Who said advice is cheap? It got so bad <br />each time I got a break at work I'd find <br />the closest window, try to catch a breath. <br /> <br />My foreman was a decent man who knew <br />I would not last much longer on that job. <br />He got me transferred out of the card room, <br />let me load the boxcars in the yard. <br /> <br />But even though I slept more I'd still wake <br />gasping for air at least one time a night, <br />and when I dreamed I dreamed of bumper crops <br />of Carolina cotton in my chest.<br /><br />Ron Rash<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/brown-lung/
