Looking out the office window
A poem
Get ready to hold — get ready to go — The world hums in cars, trucks, lights flashing red and green People are moving themselves, nudging each other, always changing their position or their affect Business will never cease, the engines of this world ignite over and over, our bodies combustible, our minds expendable and expandable even if right now seems tight now, too simple to be true yet too complex to know fully Do not abandon hope, all ye who've entered here: the wheel turns and freedom can be yours, too.
Author’s Note: I wrote this poem on January 7, 2019, on a day when I was working in an office building in downtown Portland, Oregon. The view wasn’t quite the image shown above, yet similar. Recently a word from John Koenig’s touching book “The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows” has been making the rounds on Substack: sonder. In Koenig’s words, sonder is: “the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.” Aye….
P.S. I’m trying out a new service where you could “tip” me if you’re so inclined, where I’m also running a poll on what forms of my art you most prefer: Lizz Bacon Ko-Fi page. 🙏