I can be…driven, goal-oriented. I am usually working on something and have very little idle time. But today, I feel a little lazy. Granted, it’s the weekend, and by 2:15 Saturday afternoon (when I am writing this), I’ve already worked on a poem, attended two ministry-related meetings, and mowed both my lawns. So maybe I’m entitled to feel a little lazy at this moment 😆
Still, in the spirit of laziness, I am posting “Doing Nothing” from my first book of poetry, The Wind and the Shadows. Despite the fact that the “action” in the poem is me sitting at a coffee shop, it explores much more about the human condition, and even gets a little surreal.
Doing Nothing
The coffee shop is lit and alive.
Music pumps, pulses, and circulates.
Hands dance and heads bob in conversation.
Behind the counter
it’s all cha-ching and movement—
strictly business.
My eyes wander out the window
across from me.
It’s black out there.
Ghosts of the hanging lamps inside
float in the blackness;
trees swirl in a wind
made silent
by the glass,
and I’m out there—
a reflection
adrift in the dark, wild silence—
looking in.
A Wandering Minstrel 