In The Tedium of a Metric Afternoon

 

I had the leisure,

To measure for pleasure,

The nature of an afternoon,

Of warm and scented, honeyed June,

When all was peace, yet nothing still,

To calculate the sublime,

In time and also in ‘mil’.

 

I felt the need, when I heard

The song of a garden bird,

There was nothing to gain

By use of the word,

And so reduced it to the absurd,

And measured it’s voice

And the thrill of its trill

With great precision and pain.

 

And afterwards knew,

That nothing was true,

Which existed in fragments alone,

But on a hunch

After eating lunch,

It occurred,

That I understood,

At the level of instinct and bone,

A truth that pertained in both garden and wood:

Beauty and flowers and finches,

Should always be measured in inches.