patience
there’s an air of it
all about the farm, today
having stepped briefly outside
for the dogs to tend their needs,
between pockets of rain,
buckets of it, steadily dropping,
now halted for a short while;
a temporary ceasefire,
however tenuous
everything damp
the cows,
they look like cardboard cutouts,
propped up in the fields
an air of patience leans in,
whispering to me
“the world will wait for you. it will wait.”
it’s an enticing thought,
though, steeped in bitter lies,
it most certainly is
the world waits for no one
the world gives not a single, used damn for you
not for your upper respiratory infection
not for your needing to heal, before you can
move on and finish up all those projects
the world thinks nothing
of burying your carcass in its garden
you’ll make good fertilizer
for its flowers,
it does care about those;
far, far more than it does about you,
at any rate
lots of useful minerals and nutrients
in a decaying human body;
should produce some prize petunias
but all this relaxed barometric pressure
the gentle, lilting fog,
the peaceful quiet,
the slow, calm meandering
of the dogs
and these fake cows
today, it all conspires
enveloping me
in pleasant, wistful fictions,
treating me as its mushroom,
kept in the dark of convalescence
and fed the manure of untruth
back inside, now
the humidifier is gurgling its gentle truths
i dive into the recesses of its deep end
swimming in the mists of vapor,
hints of rosemary, clove, camphor
and the other, colorful fish
who lurk in its dark ocean
i take leisurely swims
in the splintering, fingering streams
of the internet
and all its watery amusements
it too, tells me
wonderfully entertaining lies,
everything i want to hear
and more
but i know better…
about the world
and the possibility of it
patiently waiting
i know how it will steamroll
right over the slow,
the weak, the poor, the infirm,
the drowning;
those who are drowning in debt,
drowning in heartbreak,
drowning in their own lungs
the world is all too happy
to step on their heads,
with its heavy boots
and its callous lack of caring
it cares not
for your concerns
of convenience
i know of the world,
how it is
how it always
will be
i know of the world
i know that,
at least for now,
i will stay here,
in this little, comfortable blindspot,
a nook, a cranny
which the world has
somehow overlooked,
somehow erroneously
missed
the world
be dammed
if you ask me,
it has gotten
its own way
for far
too long
©2021 Kevin Trent Boswell
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