Newsletter sign up

Be the first to know when new American Life in Poetry columns are live.

Column 527

Custodians

Intro by Ted Kooser
04.26.2015
Sev­en­ty years ago, when I entered Beard­s­hear Ele­men­tary in Ames, Iowa, the school employed a cus­to­di­an, Mr. Shock­ley, who had for an office a clos­et under the stairs. I wish I could thank him for mop­ping up all our vom­it and help­ing us buck­le our galosh­es. Here’s a fine poem about cus­to­di­ans by David Livewell, from New Jer­sey, whose most recent book of poems is Shacka­max­on (Tru­man State Univ. Press, 2012).

Custodians

Retired from other trades, they wore
Work clothes again to mop the johns
And feed the furnace loads of coal.
Their roughened faces matched the bronze

Of the school bell the nun would swing
To start the day. They limped but smiled,
Explored the secret, oldest nooks:
The steeple’s clock, dark attics piled

With inkwell desks, the caves beneath
The stage on Bingo night. The pastor
Bowed to the powers in their hands:
Fuses and fire alarms, the plaster

Smoothing a flaking wall, the keys
To countless locks. They fixed the lights
In the crawl space above the nave
And tolled the bells for funeral rites.

Maintain what dead men made. Time blurs
Their scripted names and well-waxed floors,
Those keepers winking through the years
And whistling down the corridors.

Share this column

Disclaimer

We do not accept unsolicited submissions

We do not accept unsolicited submissions. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2014 by David Livewell, “Custodians,” from Southwest Review (Vol. 99, no. 2, 2014). Poem reprinted by permission of David Livewell and Southwest Review. Introduction copyright © 2024 by The Poetry Foundation.