Daylight

I wonder how many people will notice
the work of the cleaning lady,
not just the things she does with dust
but the bouquet of tiny wild flowers
she has set in a bamboo vase.

We all come to this mountain factory
in our impressive vehicles,
but rain or shine she climbs the hill
on an old bike, stopping to push it up
the steep incline and then sailing down
the descent.

She walks among the desks,
silently sweeping away the years
and the hierarchies of dirt
as if waiting for an artist
to paint something more beautiful
on the canvas of our minds.

It is her job to keep things
at base level,
to erase and not create,
to orchestrate her cleaning products and tools
into a symphony of silence,
as if wielding a magic wand
that removes the players and the audience
from the stage.

Into these empty spaces we tred,
these logical, functional units
of time that hold microchips of
sublime knowledge in
robotic hands.

There is no doubting the power of the streets,
nor the insistence of neon
at twilight,
riding back through the city,
seeing the faces of clones
on posters in shop windows,
hiding scared in the avenues,
trying to be invisible
to those who wield intellect
like a knife,
or joyful,
weld the disintegrating
bones of warehouses
into department stores.

I think she sees it too,
through the cake of her makeup,
for she navigates a featureless world
of hours written off to duty,
of lifetimes lived
at arms length,
of rainbows made invisible
by the prism of car windows.

And so is it any wonder
that she tries to nourish the illusion
of the forest,
of things seen from afar,
untouchable,
memories that seep from the earth,
that rise diluted from her rice fields,
that she carries with her,
offering me, occasionally,
bright symbols of fruit,
blood red oranges
and wine red grapes,
so that I might see that she knows
the old ways of kindness.