Sunday, January 14, 2024

Time to Fill - Jan 14 2024

 

Time to Fill

Jan 14 2024


We were often bored.

Nothing to do, we whined

in the doldrums of summer

when school was out.

When we were banished out-of-doors

to give a hot-and-bothered mother

a modicum of peace.


The ultimate sin, boredom.

As if casually dismissing

the precious gift of life;

ignoring

how brief our time is here.


A failure

of the imagination.

And perhaps

we've become too jaded

by novelty

distraction

sensation

to be content

alone with our thoughts.


Yet here I sit

with nothing to do

and time to fill,

only to find myself

writing this.

Boredom, as catalyst.


Like Newton under the apple tree.

Darwin

on his long solitary walks.

Einstein, in his Swiss patent office

idling the hours away,

daydreaming

of clocks and trains.


Of course, I would hardly compare myself

to luminaries like these.

But just as a mind

should never go to waste,

so it is with time;

even if a middling poem

is all that comes of it.


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