Still Life: Carl Sandburg

Cool your heels on the rail of an observation car.
Let the engineer open her up for ninety miles an hour.
Take in the prairie right and left, rolling land and new hay crops, swaths of new hay laid in the sun.
A gray village flecks by and the horses hitched in front of the post-office never blink an eye.
A barnyard and fifteen Holstein cows, dabs of white on a black wall map, never blink an eye.

A signalman in a tower, the outpost of Kansas City, keeps his place at a window with the serenity of a bronze statue on a dark night when lovers pass whispering.

This is one of those poems where at first glance I'm like, Hmm. Boring. But then I read it again.

Cool your heels. Slow down. Take a look around. Life's happening at different paces everywhere.

I like this poem. It's a 'picture poem' and we all know how much I like those. It kind of makes me happy. I think about going back to work today and how I have so much work to do and I get a little anxious. But now I'm reminded to just take it one task at a time, get things done well, just do my work and it will all happen in good time. Divide up the day like I would if I had a farmer's job.

Milk the cows. Check email and phone messages.
Put out the hay. Make my list of tasks.
Start the tractor. Start on one of them.
Plow the field. Get the task done.
Feed the chickens. Start another one.
Go in for lunch. Take a break.

I mean, it's not rocket science. It's my job. It makes it somehow more meaningful to think of it as just doing my part in keeping the world going 'round. Somebody feeds cows and chickens. Somebody else makes a newsletter and a set of promo materials.

Maybe I should get a nice picture of a farm and hang it in my space.