Life in quarantine has many challenges, not the least of which is motivation. This poem explores impetus, drive, planning and purposefulness; all of it coming from invisible places inside us.

Let us not lose hope or dim our lights when all around us screams at us to do so.

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What if I told you

 

What if I told you of a man,

who cautiously patents his days, pressed

like flowers in a book?

A man who rolls out his life in hours

like dried tobacco leaves, inhalation of a

hope, seen but never felt.

 

What if I told you there was

a peddler in impatient thoughts?

He travels light but burrows heavily

down, down and down again.

In a parsonage of promises, he stocks

well-peppered seasons of sweat in dreams.

 

What if I told you to mind

the gap between the see-saw

of intention and deflection?

It doesn’t move fast enough to blame

fear or mistrust, but too fast to note

progress or potential.

 

What if I told you there was one

whose animus, stolen or unmoved,

finds no spark for fires even blind men feel?

Is it hibernation or evolution; 

asleep or merely astute, above all these

pestering questions?

 

What if I told you that man was me?