Column

I sat precariously perched on a high counter,
My feet motionlessly suspended in midair,
Between ten hours apprehension (sleep was rare)
And the impending exam that was making me founder.
With a “resting” heart rate beyond 110 bpm
(Had I been truly resting, I would’ve had 50 less)
I leaned back feeling one concrete column’s caress.
They are stable, they are solid—much solace I find in them.
I tried to envision the test’s many sheets
But way too scarce seemed my knowledge of them,
So my thoughts trailed off—
Past and future coalesce.
Beholding this chaos I acquiesce
To the futility to sort out that BS,
And no longer with the temporal I obsess.
So I went up.
Ascending staircases terminated in pellucid cages
Where sunlight glass in a play of iridescence engages.
All around you, many more of such stages!
Only, the exits are locked which imminent boredom presages.
So I went down.
The basement’s embrace, a musty odor plus the heating.
The occasional lamps dye the darkness ocher; some are conceding
While thirty yards south the rays of multicolored neon tubes are meeting.
And writing this line, in its perfunctory design, naturally is cheating.
So I returned.
To my column.