First release of 'From P.H.D. to PhD' - a poem by Michael O'Leary from his book of 'Collected Poems 1981-2016' (HeadworX, Wellington, 2017) with music by Helen Dorothy. Live at Wellington Bluegrass Society, Petone, 10 August 2024.
Click link below for live performance.
FROM P.H.D. TO PHD
Once I was a P.H.D., a Pot Hole Digger
Shifting one shovel-full at a time
The more I dug, the hole got bigger
Until it was nearing Smoko time
So I said to my working mates
Who were smoking and biding time
This hole I’m digging, it grates
To work alone all the time
They all understood what I had said
And they all pitched in, and it was fine
We put down the metal ballast bed
And together laid that railway line
Another time we carried bricks all night
To build a walkway in the street of Queen
Twenty-five kilos passing hand to hand
Hardly noticing the weight that had been
And then we put down sewer pipes
In the garden of the suburb of Eden
Dangerous and heavy work, no time
For wondering what might have been
Each of our lives depended on each other
Doing whatever had to be done
No room for judgement of error
Or else we would be less one
Nowadays I’m digging holes of the mind
To become a different kind of PhD
I’m fixing a hole where the thoughts
Enter, roaming, fomenting and free
But from P.H.D. to PhD is not such
A long way, the song remains the same
If people help each other the work is lighter
Yes, that is the name of the game