This poem is in my new book, LEARNING TO SEE IN THREE DIMENSIONS. Alas this final version did not get there as i had misplaced it and did not find it till after the publication date!

Ten Minutes

(pour ma jumelle)

Sometimes when you’ve spent hours rushing somewhere

and just as many hours rushing back

you ought to make yourself stop ten minutes from home

ten minutes short of where you think

you can put your feet up

finally, and get out at the road’s edge

and ask yourself where you are

going and where have you been and why

are you hurrying just to get it over with, or is there no point

to this day but in the ending of it?

Ten minutes, this pause

wrenched out of the rush by the roadside

getting the kinks out, lets you hear the sudden quiet

of your own thoughts

as the out-of-doors pours in and gives you pause.

What have you been doing all day

racing, rushing, wasting your time all day

for what, to get what over with?

Better to have rested more along the way,

to have seen, to have been, to have watched, listened

to have paid attention

than to have beeped and swerved so much

sped and sweated in bottlenecks

and cursed the traffic for what could neither be avoided

nor its fault, being its nature.

Where had you been all day

in your hurrying to get home, but on your way

along the only way there was: yours.

Oh, but you should have known better–

how all homes are but temporary shelters:

a roadside shack or leafy park bench,

a ramshackle timber lean-to —

each a place to rest as good as any mansion

ten minutes away. Ten mere minutes from home

the roadside beckoned with saffron mustard sprigs,

brave bouncing bet. But you had no time

to pay attention, so nearly home to rest and relax.

Oh, but you should have known better—

The day scattered like dry leaves

and ended without you.

Now you pay with the rest of your life.

.