The world doesn’t know who stands outside on a summer night
Peering at the handbill as a cloud passes over the moon.
Suicide bomber moths crash into the glare of his flashlight
He will brush them way and grimly load.

Wheels roaring in the distance, rattle and clang as they near
A familiar face leans out of a half opened truck window
And waves a friendly hand. Loneliness is interrupted for a few hours.
Though no one has time to speak or to visit more than a quip or a sneer.

The gnats are maddening. They know it and rejoice.
Partaking in the sweat that travels from forehead to contact lens.
They multiply and swarm every day until it gets cold.
Not too soon they are replaced with flocks of birds and leaves

Flocks of birds and leaves are replaced by nothing…only cold.
Soul-chilling, bone-hurting, eye stinging cold.
Dry and wet cold alternate. The workers long for July, forgetting past insects
And remembering children who will find holiday things because they work outside.

They work outside in the wind with tight-lipped smiles to keep their teeth from freezing.
The driver returns and brings something this time. He grins as he opens his door
And steps down with something to share that might warm them up.
After a few jokes and bites of parking lot pizza he goes inside to turn in his paperwork.

A brief mention of hazardous materials and the paperwork is signed correctly.
He’s through; nothing to do but wait. He is lonely again.

In the mad dash of forklifts running east and west
The air thick with diesel smell, each worker is in their world, looking out
Through the grid of a cage and the blinding headlights
They think of home and the wife that sleeps alone in the bed that a truck brought.