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Leitmotif

Tom Merrill

The eye is turned inward these days,
away from the gloom in the glass,
the window’s vacancy,

the desolate picture left in the wake
of the latest revanchist crusade
to restore a compliant past.

Facing the remains, an imposed deprivation,
saddled with a heftier load of time,
one begins to make adjustments,

resorts to creating distractions
like this very problem I’m solving now,
whose unyielding grip on the mind

won’t be shaken until it’s fully resolved.
The social regime of rural religion
leaves one in a doctor’s waiting room

and makes absorption in such problems
useful in diverting
consciousness from the creeping clock.

So the eye is turned inward these days,
turned inward because it has to be,
though a few staunch rebels

still lingering out there like sitting ducks
ensure that even now
ironically embellishing seats of wisdom

with inspired masterstrokes relieves,
a little at least, one’s awareness the doctor
is seeing countless other patients first,

like that always too-busy god for which they wait.

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