Community Poetry Journal

Ira Will Not Be Attending the Meeting
BY JORDAN DAVIS
When working on a small scale
He is practicing a gesture.
So much of life is practicing gestures.
So much of living is evaluating
Those around you for signs of damage.

Now it is night, morning’s a blink away.
Sleep is sometimes thought of
As an avalanche of repair gnomes
That attends your pit stop.
Would that we were sleeping now!

Viable alternatives will be reviled
Until the point of no return is passed.
The only reasonable course of action
Is to look for sizeable flotsam,
Redo the resume, learn a martial art.

Source: Poetry (December 2009) via Poetry Foundation

This one makes me think of offices (I have never worked in an office before) and the way people look through the rearview mirror of someone who never drives out of their home. It makes me think of messages in bottles we can't touch, and how everything, including poetry, reduces to work if you think about it long and hard enough.