T.R. Hummer
Employed
A foggy morning, alarm of the moon ringing
over the horse pen. Up the road, carpenters return
To their ripsaws, and in the middle distance, a farmer
takes a wrench to his balky tractor. A crow considers
The bottom line of a skunk’s corpse, while chlorophyll
wipes green sweat from its vegetable brow.
Everywhere you look, sentience is picking up its lunchbox,
glaring at the factory clock, rolling its sleeves
Above the elbow, punching in. Nobody thinks
of the beetle doing solitary work in the dark
Mineshaft of horse dung, crafting a perfect sphere,
pushing it up the slope toward sunrise.
How pointless is it all, really? And how lonely
is this six-legged Sisyphus of shit? He seems
Not to mind if a rainstorm undoes his morning’s labor.
He returns to the stinking assembly line to begin again.