That line, "learn a trade," is from Lorine Niedecker's poem, "Poet's Work."
You can read the whole tiny poem here. You can also read many poems about Labor Day at the Poetry Foundation's Labor Day Poems page. They offer poems on work, responsibility, and the end of summer.
I like Niedecker's poem because it reminds me that writing a good poem is no different from building a good house or making a good cake, knitting a good sweater, digging a good garden, building a good engine, a good chair, a good fence. Patience, practice, the willingness to fail and try again, attention to detail, appreciation for the craft that has been honored before you and that will be learned and honored after you. And you have to keep laboring at it, day after day. "No layoff / from this / condensery" -- what a beautiful word she invented for the work of poem-ing!
What is traditionally meant by "'labor" is not all that different from art-making, if the laborer/artist is in charge, is free to follow her heart and owns the outcome. Of course, Labor Day honors those who weren't always free to make their own choices about what they built and what they drew from the ground: cars, clothes -- coal and grapes. We are grateful to them today.
But what about service? What about doctors and teachers and soldiers and mothers and fathers, whose work is the health, life, mind, heart and soul of another human being? What about hairdressers and pedicurists and grocery clerks and parking attendants, garbage men? They make something intangible, their work is their contribution to the life of the community. (Don't talk to me about money being a product of work. No no.) They can be honored today, too. They are making the society work -- as in function, as in succeed.
I guess I'm a laborer (poet) and a service worker (teacher). That's okay. It's a complicated world these days. I can knit socks for my daughter and bake bread for my son, I can harvest veggies with my husband. I write poems for the world, even if I never get famous. Teachers of poetry are not well compensated in our society, so I still live via my other service work (nurse, bureaucrat). But the poems will stand on their own, I hope, like well built chairs, ready for whatever comes.
And if you want to learn a thing or two about writing a poem, give me a call.
Happy Labor Day.
