Of top drawer not much remains known,
nor of high marks nor climbing up ladders
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