Fizzle

Every day my calendar is wrapped around
my being filled with meetings musts and don’t:s
while somewhere in between I have to squeeze
a faithless sense of peace brought on by

ginger, cinnamon, and cloves, candle-lights
and carols, cards, and wrapping of the gifts
of visitors and clothes, of musts and don’t:s

while being wrapped in dashboards, KPI:s
and end of year performance I close my eyes
and breathe. inhale exhale, I turn and leave

to take a walk around the block. The scent
outdoor is dark with soil, decay and mold.
I stop and meet the moon, and wonder why
this year can not walk slowly through the mud.
and fizzle out, like falling into dreamless sleep

Posted for dVerse Poets Pub: Poetics: Epiphany in the Time of Holiday with guest host – Dora. This is now the second Christmas under the shadow of Covid, which means that I still work from home. That also means that the season blends more and more with my work.

November 16, 2021

16 responses to “Fizzle”

Bjorn, I feel you as someone who works from home since last March 2020. It feels like an endless round of meetings and excel work, with performance meetings coming up soon. If only this pandemic year can just walk and fizzle out. Hopefully soon, we can smell that ginger, cinnamon, and cloves, candle-lights from the Holiday season. Cheers!

I think the trouble with working from home is that there is no real escape, or refuge from it, unless, like you, you go outside to take in the beauty of nature!

“I stop and meet the moon” — a potentially thrilling transition, but I like the way your epiphany surprises us by looking beyond the lights and tinsel and work, to the darkness at the heart of winter.

We had similar thoughts. I would go beyond though, and say that the year does fizzle out in mist, ice and dead leaves. We are the ones who insist on squeezing it into fun shapes that many of us actually hate.

Introspective, solitary existence in the winter crowd, feeling, tasting the atmosphere in the air, the atmosphere he is not really part of…the poet heading in another direction than Christmas… a poem full to bursting of atmosphere, in a simple walk.

Björn Rudberg (brudberg) November 17, 2021 at 22:44 · · Reply →

I love the story you told so filled with the bittersweet love and the tragedy of war… most of us have forgotten it now, but there were so many affected. The details of snow falling from branches is something I know well.

Covid does not top the list of Breaking News any more, even though it is raging as terribly as ever. Like a soldier into his second year of war, my weariness is chronic, and death has become common place. I am numbed to compassion, and shielded from the undercurrent of anger I have for the Trumpists and Nay-sayers.

A “faithless” sense of peace would feel dead indeed. I always dread having to “catch up” on farm records for end of year tax estimate.

My job was eliminated, then COVID came, then I got a kinder gentler job working from home and minus the long commute. There are worse things under heaven and earth than this quiet … It looks like your communion has improved if the human world hasn’t.

I’ve been back at the office for several months, but -yeah- the working at home thing was numbing for me…

❤
David

You have spoken my heart here, Bjorn. I feel so exactly the same especially these parts:

while being wrapped in dashboards, KPI:s
and end of year performance I close my eyes
and breathe. inhale exhale

I stop and meet the moon, and wonder why
this year can not walk slowly through the mud.
and fizzle out, like falling into dreamless sleep.

—

I am dead tired and want to rest but these dashboards are just not allowing me. Let’s cheer for a ginger and cardamom tea. beautifully done

Oh, this is exactly what I was trying to get at–you got there so much better! I especially love
“I have to squeeze
a faithless sense of peace brought on by
ginger, cinnamon, and cloves, candle-lights”