Meet My Commitments
Not a one of us held to account for Monday’s missing reports. I was certain I’d be
called or at least written up.
I’d been busy with something my job description doesn’t include: I monitor rabbits
who dig warrens on company grounds.
I’d been watching white scut drop behind Queen Anne’s lace, and waiting for dusk,
for fireflies. And who would stop me?
The hub wants to scale us back and sell us off: It’s courting buyers and has no time
for outposts in the hinterlands.
We’re paid to be autonomous, some of us. Some of us have the sense to curse the
luck. Authorities return, frightened of
those above them. And yet, I am not a strict constructionist. Machines and hands
are interchangeably obstinate.
I send a request for vacation, citing holes I patched that are holding and a dog-size
solstice in the likeness of a cloud.