Keeping Busy

Something to read, something to write

Even conversations can be planned out

To take up a measure of time, and time

Needs filling. It’s a bitch the way it works.

We wake to it, know something must be

Done or the emptiness will haunt us, will

Remind us that our place in life can easily

Be filled by others. “Busy” seems like a silly

Word, something our parents and our early

Teachers would say when they’d notice us

Slacking or preoccupied with the nothingness

That naturally surrounds us. “Get to work”

Became a slogan we turned into this bit

About needing something to read or write

Something to mark the time, to eat up time

Before it eats us up and spits us out.

       

           Time Spent

Retired people go on vacation

Trying to remember what it’s like

To need time off

To need time away

But for them

Time off has become a constant

And time away seems odd when

There’s so little left to get away from.

Retired people vacation

Trying to forget

What all this time off

And all this time away

Are leading to.

 

           About Place

Home game or away

It’s all in how

You play.

Walk down a street in NYC

Let’s say

Or in Buenos Aires

Both are big apples to chew on.

Then walk down a street

Any street

In Winooski or So. Burlington

And feel the difference.

Big apples or small

It’s all in the way you play it –

Big screen or small, big stage

Or just down the hall.

It’s all in the way you walk

And talk about

Being there or anywhere.

It becomes home or away

In what we say

About it.