I’m gray and retired, now the whole world knows it,
  but I worked many honest jobs before becoming a poet.
My first job was at twelve in a service station scrubbing floors.
Before long, I was fixing tires and oiling rusty car doors.

By sixteen, I was pumping ethyl, a high-test gasoline,
  I checked customers’ oil, they left with windshields clean.
But full-service gas has gone the way of the Sinclair dinosaur.
It’s hard to find full-service anything, anymore.

Pump jockeys were victims of oil’s repeated boom and bust,
  and those cars I over-filled have long-ago turned to rust.
Nobody says “fill ’er up” today. We don’t have time to wait.
But if you think about it, staying in the car is a good way to isolate.

Perhaps it’s time to rethink the full-service station,
  as a way to employ thousands across this nation.
Let’s bring back full-service with the stimulus money,
  to hire pump jockeys who are both educated and funny.

Transformation was due, the jig is up.
The gas business will be rebuilt from the ground up.
Soon our self-driving cars will tell a robot:
  “Check the tires, clean the windshield, and fill ’er up.”