Poetry Monday: Working ... Plus: Arrr, Matey!

It's Poetry Monday, people!  Started by Diane, taken up by Delores and I - and now, in the comments, Joan, who has agreed to take on the challenge each week and have her name up in lights, so to speak. You know the drill: Write a poem, read a poem, leave a poem in the comments - anything goes, poetry-wise. This is for fun and for sharing.

Thank you to everyone who takes the time to visit and contribute a comment or a poem. You are a fine bunch, and may I add good-looking too.

This week's topic, as suggested by Diane, is working. The first thing I think of in connection with working is the jobs we do for a paycheque. I thought about the difference between the active working lives of my parents and grandparents and my own sedentary working life, spent first at a typewriter (remember those?) and then at a computer chasing numbers and words. In June of 2016, after an extended run of very long days, aggravated by sitting in a chair that did not suit my frame, I developed rather bad hip and lower back pain. In the end, it was determined that my joints had started to seize up, like unused equipment tends to do, and then took my muscles along for the ride.

I am mostly pain-free now, but I have to keep mobile and strong to stay that way. Having been unable to walk for pleasure for six months last year has helped me appreciate even more the ability to walk now without pain. Walking is my physiotherapy, but it's also my joy.

One of the professionals who worked on me to bring me back to mobility told me research shows people who work at computers all day have as high a risk of physical impairment as nurses in the days when they lifted, moved, and worked on patients all day long. Who would have thought it?

*****

Working

Those of my family before me
All hard workers were they
A merchant, a miner, a woodsman
Their living they earned that way

A mechanic and a teacher
Were my parents' jobs, you see
And that brings me to the present
And the work that's done by me

I work with words and numbers
Typing and tapping away
I sit for hours and hours
Only fingers and eyes in play

I wonder which is the harder -
Pushing a body to give?
Or forcing a body to be so still?
Neither's a way to live

The answer may prove (as usual)
To be a shade of grey
Too much work wearies the body
Too little ... still makes you pay

A body is made to be working
And a body needs times of rest
A healthy, consistent balance
Is what suits a body best

*****

How I feel when my numbers don't behave. My brain definitely gets exercise even when my body doesn't.

Do you have to work at getting a balance of work and rest? Or does it come easily?

*****

And just before I go, might I remind all of you that tomorrow, September 19, is International Talk Like A Pirate Day (see HERE for a fun rundown on how it began, and HERE for humourist Dave Barry's hilarious column about it).

I've been waiting for this day for months, because I found this:

and also this:

Don't forget to say "arrr," "yar," or even "arf," and "matey" and "walk the plank" at some point in the day! No, no - don't actually walk the plank, just SAY it ... and if you accomplish nothing else, you'll have either confused, confounded, or exasperated the other people in your orbit ... er, on your pirate ship of life :)