Pay cheque

The garbage truck lumbers up the street, its injured-

beetle crawl slowly moving it along a path 

it knows so well it can do it without thinking

Like my neighbours, I wheel my bins to the curb

the evening before, leaving my cyclic offering on the 

sidewalk altar to feed the returning beast

I pass along its route on my way to work so 

I know the driver must be getting up well before dawn

I wonder if the early rising makes up for the stupefying mundanity

I wonder if the certainty of weekly rubbish provides 

a security of employment for him, and does the

regular pay check make up for the lack of job satisfaction

I have worked white-collar and blue, self-employed 

and shift work. I prefer the certainty of a small regular 

pay cheque than the feast and famine of self-employment

There’s something to be said for the monotony of small 

regular payments - routine to take care of life's banal essentials

providing space for a precision not possible without regularity.

MDC July 2021