423 and 424
We could just sit right here. No music on.
No show upon the screen. No need to talk.
No need to rock the Going’s goings-on.
We could just sit and listen to the clock
tick on for minutes, minutes into hours,
and find ourselves still sitting when it’s done.
When time is done. When Chronos’ metric pow’rs
are, by our sweet contentment, made to none.
We could. We could just sit right here, alone.
Your being here is more than plenteous.
A better day’s reward I’ve never known
than when no need, nor man has need of us.
No need exists but how I yearn to do
as much of nothing as I can with you.
~~~
“And I will make all my mountains a way, and my highways shall be exalted.”
~
“I said I’d do it,” said he next to me,
who held an olive shovel in his hand.
And we two looked as far as we could see
through mountains made as though they were flat land.
“The everlasting hills, they have been named,
and now they are my highway. And they stretch
from wild Alaskan wilderness, untamed,
to Patagonian coasts cold glaciers etch.”
His spade had dotted all along the way
and paved a road that anyone could reach.
And many said “how beautiful are they
who take that joyous road, and by it preach.”
But my companion was not quite yet done,
and took his blistered hands, and shoveled on.