BOTTOM LINES

Able boys who once hustled in mail rooms

now sprout green from foggy MBA halls

to magically bloom as CEOs at forty stories,

chalk still on their hands, cell phone, laptop,

the tools of their trade held tight and close,

hurry through revolving doors, laze

on extra-long yachts in tropical harbors,

in hot tubs, on their bellies for massage,

toss back cocktails past midnight

to help daylight disappear

In the Age of Slick, there is no cubicle

wide enough for the beast to prowl,

deep enough for the mutt to dig,

and for that prize they wear the rest:

latest shoe models, conservative suits,

fashionable ties, perfect hair

The toll they pay is told in numbers:

not year-to-date, not last month’s, yesterday’s,

but today at closing, tomorrow, in every other

blink of the Big Board

I watch them in the bubble of First Class A/C

flip through life to bright screens of P & L-s that glow

over stick-like children in the sharp, jagged rubble

of war zones flashed on cable news;

and over the forest where I snowshoed

in the fresh scent of unmarked snow,

up where the pines and wildflowers smelled strong

in late summer just before the aspens turned,

above the tree line where the black bear sleeps