(first appeared in “The Lyric”, Volume 73, No.1  – Winter 1993)

Awake again to tasks and daily ways;
Reluctant rise to foot the well worn soil,
the stomach calls, the spirit set, obeys;
surrenders contemplation for the toil.

Plunged from a slumberous sanctum into moil,
the mind proscribed to nigglings magnifies
each feather-weighted doing to a deed,
each step to leap, each act to enterprise.
The flesh, disdainful, strives to solemnize
the squalid thoughts which witlessly obey;
that void of sovereign value hold the prize
of sustenance for the ensuing day.

The torpid night serves only to restore
sufficient dint to propagate the chore.