Office Poetry from a Time Before Covid

Back before Covid, when I had an office to go to, and when we were still attending conferences for work, I would often be inspired by things that I encountered on a daily basis. Here are a few poems from another era, before social distancing, before full-time remote work, before Zoom meetings were the norm, before we pined for those mundane interactions that would so often annoy us at the time. 


--Friday, March 9, 2018 2:10:40 AM, A restaurant on Fremont Street in Las Vegas--

She sat alone at the bar wearing her leather, Buffalo nickel hat, reading a book

The sounds of the Vegas nightlife washing over her, leaving no residue

In a setting of constant motion and commotion she was the calm center of my attention

Chestnut hair, 

  skin so fair, 

    casual style, 

      without a care

An anachronism to the modern crowd and to the tawdry spectacle everywhere you looked

It was too irresistible to keep from dropping a rock into her calm waters

And seeing which way the ripples played

I could have watched them dance across the surface all night



--Friday, March 2, 2018 2:36 PM, in a conference room like so many others--

project my slide deck and my voice

attend the meeting and to the subject being discussed

Deliver results and milestones

My day is awash in verbs

How can there be a glass ceiling

when I have no visibility about what goes on over my head



--The Evils of Starbucks - Friday, January 19, 2018 9:53 AM--

This morning the girl in front of me in the Starbucks

The one with white Doc Martin boots and shiny, silver tights,

The one with the chestnut hair and puffy yellow jacket,

The one who stood a full three inches taller than me,

The girl in the line in front of me in Starbucks

She was wearing an orange knit cap pulled down over her ears

The cap had a hole just above and behind the left temple

An inch long opening that showed the sheen of her hair underneath.

I took a step to the right and leaned around

Looking for a matching hole in her cap on the right side

Certain that the holes were not by chance

Wondering if she bought the cap to fit her horns,

Or if her horns made the holes.

And I wondered what kind of latte a devil would get.



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