Boxes Poem by Patrick O'Reilly

It’s cold in the morning
Getting to the warehouse.
The grimy steel walls wait in the dark
For the heat of sun and labour.

Deep inside
The shelves stretch for miles,
Groaning under the weight of matchboxes
Like rows of tangly bricks.

I buckle under the weight of the first box,
The first pallet,
And I can already feel my back stiffening
And my body getting too old too soon.

As I stack them high, one by one
I am building my very own tomb,
Buried as the mountain reaches over my head.

It won't be long now.