They are never confronted

with comfortable dilemmas
or too many options.
They have only one choice--
to get up and crush the
vertebrae of their backs
into dust to have enough
to swallow each night
so that they can rise,
and ignore the complaints
flooding in from every part
of their pack animal bodies,
and repeat the process
until,
when they are no longer able
to bend wizened hands to the
task,
they are thrown onto the pyre
to be mourned and wept over
in the interval between
shifts.