Too Afraid of Nothing

Even in their leisure time, people are too goal-oriented -
and you see it in the way they stand in line at an ice-cream stand
drumming their fingers against their hips
like they can barely stand
waiting for a thing that will only melt in their gut.

And I see it in their faces, a whole hoard of them
scuttling by on sightseeing trolleys,
one after the next, each blank glare convinced
the answer to all its boredom is something optical
when really it's of the mind
and most fertile
when the eyes are closed.

That's why when I see a derelict sleeping on a shaded park bench
on a Tuesday afternoon,
or a few elderly black guys huddled together in lawn chairs
in a weedy vacant lot
and talking
I am impressed
by how oblivious they seem to be
to the passage of time
and nothing seems as proper
as the purposelessness
of their undertakings.

Because most of our goals are the results
of too much imagination
or too much ambition
and Heaven isn't always
the finish line or the final answer,
but rather the ageless beauty
of the present moment
and in flowing aimlessly
and thoughtlessly
with its whims
like nothing else mattered
or nothing ever will,
not even this.

Michael Powers lives in Boynton Beach, Florida, and has been published in The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Poems Niederngasse, and Entropy Magazine.

Email: Michael Powers

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