Janitorial

Janitorial

All morning he drifts the spacious lawns
Like a gleaner, picking up this and that,
The summer clouds immense and building
Toward afternoon, when the heat drives him
Under the shade of the oak trees in the quad
And then along cool corriders inside
To pull down last term’s flyers

For the chamber recital, the poetry reading,
The lecture on the ethics of cloning,
The dinner with some ambassador,
The debate between Kant and Heidegger,
The frat party, the sorority party, the kegger,
The weekend Bergman festival, the Wednesday
Screening of Dumb and Dumber. He says
Hello to fine young ladies, and tries
Not to dwell on their halter tops,
Their tanned thighs, shorts up to here.

At five he climbs into an old, dumpster-colored
Olds, lights up and heads home
Across the barge-ridden river in its servitude
To East St. Louis, where you know
This poem—glib, well-meaning, trivial—
Grows tongue-tied, and cannot follow.

Copyright by George Bilgere

Poems from Haywire
Winner of the 2006 May Swenson Poetry Award (through the Utah State University Press) Posted over on the Bilgere Home Page