05-31-2025, 02:18 PM
Useful Idleness
I sit on my patio watching
how the world breathes
to understand the wind
how it teaches the leaves
about rain and the bloom
of the white peony, why
it kneels under its weight
at each spring’s renewal
from this patio I hope
to be of little consequence
I remember the world
how it caught us in breath
we all were contained, how
sweetly we breathed newly found
air so quickly cleaned however briefly
we became of little consequence
still the world breathes despite
Aleppo, Gaza, Mariupol, Tel Aviv
the world knows how children die
in the streets when small men cry
fearing how the wind whispers
you are of little consequence
from my patio I see a world
unsure why the peony kneels
listening to the wind writing
poems of little consequence.
I sit on my patio watching
how the world breathes
to understand the wind
how it teaches the leaves
about rain and the bloom
of the white peony, why
it kneels under its weight
at each spring’s renewal
from this patio I hope
to be of little consequence
I remember the world
how it caught us in breath
we all were contained, how
sweetly we breathed newly found
air so quickly cleaned however briefly
we became of little consequence
still the world breathes despite
Aleppo, Gaza, Mariupol, Tel Aviv
the world knows how children die
in the streets when small men cry
fearing how the wind whispers
you are of little consequence
from my patio I see a world
unsure why the peony kneels
listening to the wind writing
poems of little consequence.