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Never Enough to Go Around
6am, and the world is just about
to fire up again and
over across the way
there’s a black dog straining at its chain,
barking and barking at a starless black sky,
black sky fading to a sheet metal grey,
then, a pale powder blue,
hot black coffee starting to cool,
sixteen Redwing Blackbirds
sitting on a wire,
right above a rusted-out pick-up
that’s missing its front driver’s side tire.
A shoebox full of unopened letters,
a black pleather cowboy boot
sprouting yellow flowers,
a piece of notebook paper,
found in a copy of Don Quixote;
a long list of “things to do, Summer 2002
(#14- finish Don Quixote).”
And here, at the center of it all,
an old-school, wind-up alarm clock
chopping out our meager allotments of time
with a tiny, relentless, insectile sound.
Time;
just never enough of it to go around.
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About the Author: Jason Ryberg is the author of thirteen books of poetry, six screenplays, a few short stories, a box full of folders, notebooks and scraps of paper that could one day be (loosely) construed as a novel, and, a couple of angry letters to various magazine and newspaper editors. He is currently an artist-in-residence at both The Prospero Institute of Disquieted P/o/e/t/i/c/s and the Osage Arts Community, and is an editor and designer at Spartan Books. His latest collection of poems is The Ghosts of Our Words Will Be Heroes in Hell (co-authored with Damian Rucci, John Dorsey, and Victor Clevenger, OAC Books, 2020). He lives part-time in Salina, KS with a rooster named Little Red and a billygoat named Giuseppe and part-time somewhere in the Ozarks, near the Gasconade River, where there are also many strange and wonderful woodland critters.
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More by Jason Ryberg:
Sometimes the Moon is Nothing More than the Moon
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Image Credit: Chase Dimock “Fleener Chimneys, Lava Beds National Park” (2020)
As It Ought To Be 