Everything Must Go

The blue bicycle that arrived,

gleaming from the shop,

now leans crooked against the broken shed,

its faded paint and musty seat

forgotten within the muddy yard;

a relic of disregard.

 

“Everything Must Go”,

or so the big sign said.

 

The wild-eyed yearling steers,

corralled in the dusty stockyard,

bellow with the steady beat

of the big truck's thrumming diesel.

Loaded for the killing floor

the driver guns it and is gone -

like a vanishing point, or a setting sun.

 

Into the Bluebird Retirement Home

her family wheels a fragile lady:

she recalls no earlier times,

nor why she's here:

has she committed some wrong?

 

“What shall I do,” she wonders,

where these strangers throng?”

 

“Everything must go”

sighs the distracted nurse.

 

Chris Hubbard, 2019