Thursday, December 4, 2008

Grindstone

Corner office
eight-fifteen
making those reports
look clean
counting beans
until they’re right
framed in flat
fluorescent light

Your wife is home
your kids are fed
puts the youngest
one to bed
goes upstairs
to draw a bath
helps the other two
with math

Saturday
you pack the van
soccer dad
and family man
Monday morning
up and gone
before the coffee
pot turns on

Someone has to
win the bread
you mumble as
you slip in bed.

6 comments:

K.Lawson Gilbert said...

This one made me laugh! Wow! Don't we work our a**es off all week long with work and family? When you have young ones the weekends are so busy. The weekends go by in 15 minutes - then we slump off to work again to go through another 5 days!!! (ugh)But...It's all good! ;)

What does this mean?
"...counting beans
until they’re right
framed in flat
fluorescent light."

Anonymous said...

"counting beans..."
could this be about the absurdity of one's job, in a boring office under a neon light, work that makes sense after all... cuz it's all for the bread on the table!!!

making sense out of nonsense :P

maaga..... said...

this was different..i like it.

joaquin carvel said...

yes, that's pretty much it..."counting beans" from the term "bean counter", usually referring to bookkeepers/accountants, but also illustrative of most work that happens in an office...and "flat
fluorescent light"...that dead glow so many of us work under - there's no shadows, just degrees of dimness....

K.Lawson Gilbert said...

Oh, of course, Joaquin. Thanks, I feel so foolish. I must have been up reading very late that night - I really know what bean counters are - lol.

I love this in your explanation:

"flat fluorescent light"...that dead glow so many of us work under - there's no shadows, just degrees of dimness...."

That is poetry in and of itself!!

Anonymous said...

I wrote a poem about office workers, but yours is much better! So, so true. I love making the reports look clean and the flat fluorescent light. Grindstone is the perfect title, too. I love it:)