I've Been Working So Hard
I've Been Working So Hard - meaning Summary
Playful Catalog of Exhaustion
The poem presents a speaker who insists they have been "working so hard" yet lists whimsical, small-scale tasks—holding grass, tasting apples, warning robins, counting centipede toes, and tracking breaths. The repetition of being "tired" turns the claims into playful irony, collapsing grand notions of labor into attentive, childlike stewardship of nature. The tone mixes humor and gentle exaggeration, making exhaustion a comic consequence of meticulous, affectionate care.
Read Complete AnalysesI've been working so hard you just wouldn't believe, And I'm tired! There's so little time and so much to achieve, And I'm tired! I've been lying here holding the grass in its place, Pressing a leaf with the side of my face, Tasting the apples to see if they're sweet, Counting the toes on a centipede's feet. I've been memorizing the shape of that cloud, Warning the robins to not chirp so loud, Shooing the butterflies off the tomatoes, Keeping an eye out for floods and tornadoes. I've been supervising the work of the ants And thinking of pruning the cantaloupe plants, Calling the fish to swim into my nets, And I've taken twelve thousand and forty-one breaths, And I'm TIRED!
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