I am, it seems, always on my way

to work — I mean, the moment I am free,

time stretches out like this clean sheet

beneath my pen — but then, the margins crumple in

almost at once, as if the next shift

was here before me, tearing holes

through which a life, once promisingly full,

now leaks away, exhausted drip by drip

by drip — there goes the time I’ll wish I’d spent,

oh, I don’t know — : just looking at the sky?

or playing with my kids? — but drip by drip go I,

collected and distilled to fractions of a dividend

that a well-washed hand unwraps and then,

discarding me, a crumpled wrapper, consumes all this regret