Shift Work.

SHIFT WORK

   All my life I've worked shift work
     --casual remark at 45th school reunion

   and here we are at the end of the dog watch
   the sky in the east blast-furnace red
   "mother" at home, now without the kids
   to herd out to make way for the worker,
   but habit is hard to break, and the mind well-trained,
   and you still sleep and dream after lunch
   of that once a week couple of schooners
   at Stiffy's early opener
   and a slow morning with the paper
   before you flop down at lunch,
   you hear the kids come home, get up
   for dinner, I should say tea/breakfast,
   listen to the news, oil the bike, turn on the torch
   and pedal through the work-time night
   to where dawn is heaped in coke
   waiting to be transformed into pink rose light
   for when the last doggie ends
   and we wake in peace