Animal time

A shock awaits you

Because you have no plans

For not being in this here and now

Even when you wonder about the point of it all,

With struggles and setbacks

And reels and reels of rubbish moments

As you use up time

Instead of staying still -

Tapping into the joy

That’s just beneath,

Not dumping it on a landfill.

The time is measured now.

So, while you still worry about what to do with it;

You greet the cat sincerely and meaningfully,

Staring quizzically from a front garden;

He or she seems to wonder too,

But with wise eyes

That know a thing or two about real being,

Absorbing without being a part of

The human merry-go-round.

You share the hopeless indecision

Of the three-legged dog,

Who stops in his tracks,

After a valiant laboured, wobbly forward burst.

Noticing my interest,

He dolefully seeks salvation,

But realises that sympathy is all that is on offer.

They, not the biped talkers and thinkers,

The tinkers, the drinkers,

The workers, the shirkers

Demand my attention.

It’s the solid strength of their silence -

The way they play the long game,

Day by day

But, being such diurnal merchants of the commonplace,

They have no place for the trite,

The jetsam and flotsam,

The detritus of the daily discourse,

Bobbing on the horizonless sea,

Which is a type of avoidance,

An attachment to irrelevance.