I Work Outside
Winter comes and I’m out here
Cold bites my toes and nips my ear.
Nature slaps my face with it’s cold north wind
Eight hours are over thank God I go in.
How I envy the ones who work indoors
With shining lights and spotless floors.
Finally, spring has come and the north wind’s gone
Sweet flowers are promising and the day grows long.
Eight hours I work, some in rain, some in sun
Warm days, cold nights, trees bud, saps run.
Sun greets me in the morning, birds sing me a song
Of love and renewal and I feel I belong.
Summer breaks and the sweat pours
Long hours are spent mowing lawns, doing chores.
Days seem endless old Sol is relentless
Eight hours I toil, the sun’s heat is endless.
Finally it leaves, setting the sky on fire
I watch, awed by it’s power, from my humble lair.
Fall takes over as the season changes
Morning dew turns white, nips at the senses.
Days grow shorter, greens wither and die
Eight hours I work, how they do fly by.
Warm afternoons glisten with colors so bright
Harvest moons glow orange, stars shine in the night.
No, I don’t envy the ones that work in
Exchanging gossips and problems, never feeling the wind.
Swapping the cold of the month, building stress levels high
Eight hours they work never seeing the sky.
Not using time allotted by the one called Divine.
To relax and enjoy such simple pleasures as mine.
So to work they go in their four wheeled cocoons
To glass menageries until late afternoon.
Under fluorescent suns and neon moons
They wonder how I’m able to survive
Elements out here from eight to five
When truly I know I’m the one really alive.
I’ll work in the elements nature deals out
Toughened by things different than corporate clout.
A part of the universe, to this I lay claim
A larger picture, engulfed, through pleasure and pain.
I belong, yes I do, to a different world
Universal in nature, Gods world unfurled.
Dan Fulton