Poetical in Pensacola Offers Up a Poem. Our Post of the Week.

Teaching, Early November

for College Misery, on the start of your tenth year

I am not a snowflake, but
I'm in the deep drifts now:
like a bear starving in the winter
I cannot make my bed
in a hollow of body heat
blanketed with flakes
but must climb out
or waste away trapped below.

The drifts of paper slide
as I move
things from one side
to the other.
I've given up on trays,
on software,
and file folders are a fantasy:
instead
a storm of flowering
post-it notes,
profusion of yellow,
orange, blue,
nodding caps shout
"DEADLINE"
"ATTENTION"
and
"TO DO TODAY"
in banks of weeks gone by.

The Outlook stream never freezes,
chattering over the stones
with icy fingers,
problems to solve right now,
and a call for proposals:
fat salmon of possibility
that I can't reach:
I'm still buried.

I'll excavate,
(I must, or die)
push aside those piles,
use the circular file,
delegate, and delete.

Summer can't come soon enough.




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