Time Animated

Sitting at my desk realizing that I was bored to tears, I was not sure that the decision to leave my high stress job several months earlier had been the right choice. The view from my window on 4th Street faces the police station and the occasional bright orange of the prisoners jumpsuits as they were being transferred from one station to another began to grab my eye like a refreshing drink to a dying man. Before long I found myself anxiously awaiting any distraction of color in the midst of a colorless landscape of boredom.

While chatting on the phone with my daughter she suggested that since I had hoped to have more time for writing I should take the opportunity and write something. Below is the result. Let me know what you think.


Time Animated

A slow day at work sets my mind racing,
Seeking distractions I notice little things
Every movement that grabs my attention is a respite,
An attempt to make time move
As fast as the police cars
Screaming past my window while the time
On my computer slowly ticks by;
And I begin to think that I may not

Survive this day, when the sudden bright red
Of a bus grabs my attention and I drink
It in ravenously, and find my eyes darting from
One streak of color to the next, colors that appear
As life lines in a gray desert

Of time, time that threatens to swallow
Me whole, even as I hunger for it to move, it takes on
A stationary malaise that seems to fold
In around me becoming a dense monochromatic landscape,
Where the most ordinary things
Become extraordinary, simply by possessing
Color; then in a moment, I am

Suddenly, brilliantly, aware that the slow tick,
Of time has halted life’s rushing,
Holding me for today at least, here at my window,
Embedded, embraced, enraptured.

Conni Struss Johnson ©