Can’t concentrate today;
All the little boxes on the forms
(that bring such color-coded, left-aligned
order to the world)
are just lines on a page.
And who cares if in a year, breakfast ends
at 9:00 or 9:15? A difference only in strokes of ink,
it doesn’t translate.
Got questions out in the ether, emails sent
last week. Can’t continue till those answers come
and so I wait. What good is busywork in a holding pattern
when you know that any minute now, you’ll get the call?
The meaning won’t descend
on these artificial deadlines for months
and while I know by then
the time for unpanicked thinking will be past,
I can’t convince myself to give the nod,
accept this contrived necessity as truth,
and do it now.