10-The Vacation

Three weeks off from work

and I bathe in a luxury of time.

Hours now grow plentiful as the beard

streaming from Michelangelo’s Moses.

I am a prophet of leisure,

extolling its benefits and cures.

My job-life was a virus. Currently, I’m cured

of the tedium of long-lingering fevers.

My workweek was a disease I’m free from–

sigh!–even if only temporarily.

The novelty of stretched-out aimless bus rides

has become the norm of my days.

Peering out bus windows, I contemplate

life’s calm unspooling of activity.

Active at doing nothing, I’ve become

an expert extravagant procrastinator.

Procrastination gives me a chance

to watch lightbulbs attract busy gnats.

I’ve grown so used to the cloister

of my snug, solitude-filled life

I might never journey all the way

back to the world I’ve escaped from,

its jumble, muck and noise,

its girdle of obligations, constrictions.

And if I retire from all responsibilities,

will the world weep for my absence,

or will it neglect to even notice I’ve gone?