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OTHER
POEMS
Chitwood's
Ties
The
Day Ending and Beginning in the Afternoon
Because they never finish,
they quit at 4, having started
at 7 with 30 minutes for lunch
and 15 minutes for morning and afternoon break.
Second shift will wander in,
gradually a few more in the canteen,
a few in the changing rooms,
a few having a smoke on the loading dock.
Some come half an hour early
to gossip over Cokes and coffee,
to take their ease about punching in,
and one or two run in,
pinning on a hairnet
or making themselves stroll
through the smolder of the supervisor's gaze.
The stragglers meet the swarm
the 4 o'clock bell releases,
grown men and women running for the parking lot,
the gates, the evening to come.
But there are a few who have washed up and patted a damp paper towel
on their necks and run a finger under watchbands
to ease a day's worth of pinching
and now they sit on a wooden bench,
backs to the wall throbbing with the continuous life
of supply meeting demand.
They watch the parking lot empty
and look out through the chain-link
at the sumac and scrub pine
that border corporate property.
Gum foil glints in the parking lot.
Sparrows notch the fence.
These few are in no rush to get on with it
or get it over.
--from The Weave Room
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