Workadaydream

Since there's no help, come, let us pay the rent
and bury busy noses in our bills;
sign every check till all the money's spent,
forestall a month or so these mortal ills.

Let neither art nor poetry intrude
to draw attention off important stuff;
there's gas to buy, and medicines, and food,
for which these wages scarcely seem enough.

Now, when all the weeks and days and hours
that make a life are lived but to be sold,
each youthful dream a seed that never flowers,
and possible paths barred by gates of gold--

you might yet turn your pockets out, and find
ahead the roads you thought you'd left behind.