Fitting

I was the last one on payroll

when it was time to tear the biodiesel plant down.

Twenty five good people paid and gone

dozens of interns with sweet meal tickets punched.

Everyone was off to high-flying jobs

everyone was making bank.

I got the rancid grease and tanks of solid goo.

It was bittersweet

tearing out pipes we had fitted ourselves

cutting welds we laid down like a stack of dimes.

We dreamed of fueling our community with waste vegetable oil

my job was to sell those dreams for scrap.

When it was all over, I ended up with a thousand pounds of

pipe fittings, flanges, nipples, and ball valves.

That was my tip.

Some say it’s a shame

Others think it is fitting...

***Fitting was the Runner-up in the 2020 Working People's Poetry Contest and appeared in the Summer 2020 edition of Blue Collar Review.