It is almost done, this arid stint 
of balancing ambivalent extremes; 
his life a double-entry system: work
a force-fed virtue, all daydreams debited.

Such are his thoughts these mornings 
driving himself to his desk. It's not 
so much the job he's going to 
miss, as the journeying between.

Company cars with coat hangers jostle 
him through June and July—past 
the bloodied verge where poppies persist 
in taking the bend too fast—into August.

Pea-viners have ravaged the night fields, 
stripped away the haulms leaving the green 
stained soil naked, shameless into the dawn.
The first of the barley is cut, and blanched

straw rolls drunken to a taut horizon.
The sun is poised to drive a slow stake 
through the thumping heart of summer. 
His odyssey almost complete, he approaches

that place where the man becomes the job,
the job the man; where his aim, now,
is not so much to gain, as not to lose 
respect, his Libran grip on things.

And soon he will clear his desk, 
pretend not to see the collection 
box on its round. He will offer 
a loyalty's dregs to the shredder.




Haulms refers to the stems or stalks of certain 
cultivated plants—most commonly potatoes, peas, beans, 
and vetches—after the crop itself has been harvested.