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"I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils…"
"I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils…"
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Theodore Roethke *
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I have a job, but am sometimes out of work. I try to sit patiently then in silence, without grimaces, expecting nothing. Work will eventually arrive to be edited, to dissolve the time away. Without it, I'm lost in broad daylight, prone to sort and re-sort my pens, pencils, and schedules. I'll even brush my teeth and straighten the telephone cord so its one loop turns toward the green banker's lamp, a gift from my parents. Or I'll stack my snack change by year near my coffee cup, arrange my reference books alphabetically by author, and clean the computer keyboard. Sometimes, I'll daydream of the drive home, with the radio tuned to jazz.
I have a job, but am sometimes out of work. I try to sit patiently then in silence, without grimaces, expecting nothing. Work will eventually arrive to be edited, to dissolve the time away. Without it, I'm lost in broad daylight, prone to sort and re-sort my pens, pencils, and schedules. I'll even brush my teeth and straighten the telephone cord so its one loop turns toward the green banker's lamp, a gift from my parents. Or I'll stack my snack change by year near my coffee cup, arrange my reference books alphabetically by author, and clean the computer keyboard. Sometimes, I'll daydream of the drive home, with the radio tuned to jazz.
.
gone one evening
the black, brown, and sorrel
thick tousles of grass
* From the poem of the same name in The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke (New York: Anchor Books, 1975, p. 44).
by Richard Straw
Cary, North Carolina
first published in Lynx XXIII:1, February 2008
Absolutely, incredibly wonderful!
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