What We Take

We take our coffee without cream.

We take our meals when the whistle lets us,
one half hour at a time.
Ham on rye’s as fancy as we get,
some yellow mustard on the bread,
maybe cheese, maybe lettuce if we’ve got time,
chips and pickle on the side.

We take it on faith
that we might lose these jobs.
So we take our money home
and keep it close enough to hear it squeak.

We take our clothing simple and plain
and cheap as we can find. Once in a while
we’ll take on something
with a touch more style
as long as it toes a certain line.

We take our evenings as they come.
We take our friends as warty and hard
as we are.   We talk the way we learned to talk
at the knees of those like us,
and if we do change the conversation
it’s only a little at a time
unless we’re shoved along a path
we didn’t plan to take,
and then we do what we can
to hold on to what we used to say,
adding new words only where they fit.

We take the evening news with a heap of salt.
Even when it makes some kind of sense
we don’t pay much attention
unless we recognize a name or a face.
We work too hard to care too much
which suits are running the game
we know we’re going to lose.

We take our champions as they are
and our warriors as we find them.
We take them to heart if they sound like us
because that’s how we know they’re real.
We take on the battles they want to fight
because that’s how we learn to hope.

We take out the garbage first thing in the morning
to keep it safe from the raccoons and skunks
and the neighbor’s dog that rips the bags for snacks.
We swear we’ll mess that dog up one of these days
for messing us up and making it hard
to keep order on the streets where we live. 
We take a moment to look one way,
then the other, before crossing the street
and climbing into our cars
in our same old solid clothes,
clutching steaming travel cups
and the brown bags
that hold the same kind of sandwiches
they held yesterday
and the day before.