Free Verse · Love
The Quiet Work
Nobody hands out medals
for the quiet work —
the found shoe, the cooled fever,
the crust cut off the bread,
the light left on.
So let this be the medal:
everything I am
was carried first
in your two hands.
Original poem © QuillOak — personal sharing is permitted.
“The Quiet Work” by The QuillOak Editors — quilloak.com/poems/the-quiet-work
Quick facts
- Poem
- The Quiet Work
- Poet
- The QuillOak Editors
- Length
- 9 lines
- Form
- Free Verse
- Themes
- Love, Family
Craft notes
How this poem works
Measured from the text on this page, not copied from a summary. Counts are approximate: syllables and rhymes come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which models General American English, so dialect, older pronunciation, and performance can all change what you hear.
- Shape
- 9 lines · 2 stanzas of 4–5 lines
- End rhyme
- No regular perfect end rhyme. The poem may still be using slant rhyme, assonance, or internal echo, which this check does not score.
- Line length
- Lines run 4-7 syllables (median 5). No single length dominates, which is normal once elision and contraction are in play.
Want the rules this form is measured against? Read what makes a free verse, or run your own draft through the form checker to see the same measurements on your lines. How we measure · Report a mistake
Text, source & rights
A traceable edition
Original QuillOak text. Personal sharing is permitted; other reuse requires permission.
- Author record
- The QuillOak Editorstoday
- Source record
- QuillOak originalThe Quiet Work, authored for QuillOak by The Quillery
- Display decision
- Full text · United States · reviewed 2026-07-18
- Publication record
- Not recorded in the imported source
- Text fingerprint
- SHA-256 15aa17ad16e4d728…
- Editorial handling
- Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.
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