TOO BUSY

(A marriage scene)

Caught

in this dizzy maze

of doings and goings, we calculate

our overcrowded days

in childrens’ cries and serpentine

demands -- curators of a vast

disorderly museum.

Like steers

in springtime, switching tails at flies,

drawn by each stem and blade of grass

at once, we pass each other

jostling by, absorbed observers

otherwise preoccupied.

Head down in details, who’d suspect

the smothered passions

bovine snuffl’ings reflect?

Woodrose (Beloit College), 1979