Worker

An hour, a day, a week, a month, a year,
I age earning wages, my life bartered
for habitual labor, where breath here
and now is spent in finite time structured.

The solace of being told what to do,
where details of the workday occupy
my mind, where it is succor to eschew
all unsettling questions of asking why.

Yet, invaluable reward of learned
skill, where a deftness in nurtured ease flows
and virtues of virtuosity earned
waken mature joy only work bestows.

Paradox of work where I, slave to time,
can accomplish a freedom most sublime.