Things Bound For Nowhere...

I have spent the last week
lashed,
by the cold wind
that blows through the open steel doors
of diesel blackened loading docks;
piled high
with drums wrapped in taut plastic
and crates held together
by sea rusted nails.

And I cannot
get the soot,
and taste of travel,
off my hands
and tongue.

All these large parcels
bound to oak pallets,
awaiting the lift,
stow,
journey,
and arrival.

Heavy things
with a purpose.

I would like to place the weight
I carry,
on an oak pallet
and send it off
across the sea,
to a place where it might be cared for and wanted.
I would like to suffocate it
in tight plastic
and impale it
with rusty sea nails,
and send it on it's way.

I would like to watch
as my heavy load
is effortlessly raised
by a propane fueled forklift
and stowed at the very far dark end
of a shipping container,
bound for nowhere
that I will ever be
and have to think about again.

Imagine the surprise
when many miles away
across this silly blue marble,
a well traveled crate
is split open and apart,
by blued steel pry bars
and cheap hammers;
and inside
instead
of an industrial fuel pump,
my broken heart is found
buried in a soft bed of saw dust and regret?

But I am not so fortunate
to free myself
from this load.
Instead,
I pack up this broken heart
along with the tools of my trade
and prepare to take them home.

But in the temporary lull
between the shift change,
I stand on the loading dock.
I examine my diesel, soot stained hands.
I rub them together
hoping to feel something.
But there is nothing.
The black soot gloves I wear
have insulated me
from the cold wind that blows,
through my broken heart
and the opened
steel doors.

Everything
seems to be moving
towards something,
except me.