The workers, whispering among themselves;
Another one of them has been let go,
And each is thinking of his own career.
It’s never just a job; it’s life itself,
As temperatures fall. The boss cares not.
Will he be starving when the winter comes?
He doesn’t notice workers on the street,
Who shuffle down the sidewalk, underfoot,
For whom the gutter is the terminus.
I watch in silence as he cuts them loose.
Some flush with anger; others pale with fear.
And I know none of them will long survive.
But when the streets of this necropolis
Are full, the ones like me are out in force,
To sweep the earth, assembling the dead,
Whose well-earned rest is never permanent.
Their work will never end, and neither mine.
We gather them in drifts of the deceased
To decompose, and smell their browning flesh,
These workers working even in the end.
For someone has an appetite to sate,
And so we feed them. Nothing goes to waste.
The boss is patient, as the well-fed are.
He eats and drinks the fill of all of us;
He dwarfs us and, with such a hardened heart
And stone-cold face, will wait for winter’s end,
For workers green and inexperienced
So he can eat next year, for years to come.
And as for me? I know the boss will live;
He will outlive the rest of us in time.
And though the system strikes me as unfair,
I cannot bring myself to revolution.
I do love how the leaves turn in the fall.