I am alone with the quiet and the chilling sunshine
the ticking clock and wind-blown light
nothing to do that must be done.

I’ve left my work life behind me
paid days of anxious scribbling;
spreadsheets, meetings, report drafts, coffee
while I gazed out my cubicle window over the Salish Sea
plied by ferries moving white and green across the sea’s deep blue.
Or, I looked long into the dense fog of winter dark early mornings –
fog creeping silent up to my own window high above
so that neither ferry nor sea could I behold –
just a gray shimmer quavering shadow,
ghostly hovering there before my eyes,
suggestive of an unknown, future, less scripted life.
I watched, as the mindless gray gave way to a full and lustrous winter crisp moon
crackling white in the cold dark morning.
Its brilliance washed the water’s expanse with a rippling shimmer of moonlight,
illumining the churned and opalescent wakes of ferries,
shining as if on ships making their ways to heaven across a vast sea
to where the moon itself lives when it sets over the western horizon.

Oh, how I then complained of my tedious days of work,
the numbing aspect of time ground to a halt.
My companions allowed me to expound at length,
on the baffling politic of management concern!
These are such companions as one needs in life,
who see you through the hours of countless working days
and are content to have you return again the next
in spite of all manner of gruff, and you understand they are true –
the good fortune of work, forgiveness there, and a task, well done at the last.

Still, it is the moon over the sea
the sun’s shine on the mountains snow-capped peaks
the ferries slow movement over the water
and the curling, implacable fog I remember
from the days when I was paid for the work I did
unlike today, with its ticking clock, its windblown light
and with nothing to do that must be done.

Portland, Oregon – February 23, 2016

The picture, above, is of a small portion of the Salish Sea, otherwise known as Puget Sound, on which sits the great city of Seattle.  The photo was taken through what was my cubicle window by a colleague who now claims that view. I thank her for this.