Community Service
Any inland town
a washed-out afternoon, life
is not quite a gift, more
like a sentence – community service
of a sort. Pushing prams
getting the kids off to school, wondering
what to do about the fucking fees
the car-bills the mortgage Dave’s drinking.
Going through the motions, the hoops and loops,
no life much different, thinking it
all-important, which it is, and isn’t;
kind of lost in the culture of others, getting by,
and not, and looking out the kitchen window
at the wider life elsewhere, dreams of tomorrow
maybe, today for sure,
right here.
Leonard Lambert