Liken me to any of the many men who have left the playing field, luckier than some at the outcome when the recap is revealed. We’re kicking through the litter on the sidelines or in the coal mines feeling just a little bitter. I was beckoned totally by the money but now I wonder at it all when I recall the conditions we worked under, we thought then worthwhile, to attain and maintain a family and lifestyle. Reckon me fortunately uninfected by the contaminants in the air, carbon hexes and fibrous asbestos that lingered everywhere. Figure me inflicted to forgive over benzenes and carcinogens, dioxins and mutagens we endured so that we could live. Imagine me far from where sulfur saturates the air. Picture me on a Caribbean island where no bitumen inhabits the sand, where mercury rises in the thermometer not throughout the local water. Define me proudly by my trade but protect me from the trade I made.
Max Vandersteen is a retired pipefitter from Edmonton who resumed writing poetry after a career in the petrochemical industry. His work explores social justice themes including reconciliation, environmental consequences of resource use, and global community action. He is President of the Edmonton Stroll of Poets Society and Edmonton Representative for The Ontario Poetry Society. Vandersteen has published three poetry collections—Iguanas of El Ray (2013), Fair Play (2016), and Work of Words (2020)—with poems in numerous anthologies, and has received multiple honorable mentions and a Judges’ Choice award.