How many heroes have chosen this path,
Of least or no resistance?
In the face of overwhelming odds,
Or staring at cubicular, corporate submission;
Elect instead the stance
Of simply
Doing
Nothing?

Victorian ladies thought it amusing;
20th Century Centurions and Puritans condemned it.
The spoon-fed rich live it and lose nothing.
Russian aristocrats sometimes recommend it…
When spurned in love & up against it.

Oblomov, for instance, whiled his time away,
In bed, or staring out at the wood,
Writing meaningless letters and ignoring the day,
Yet it still did him some good.

Marat in his bathtub, Proust in his bed,
Still accomplished SOMETHING
Or we’d have forgotten them instead.
Is there still no virtue in doing nothing?

Against the tide of corporate work,
Aquarians rebelled with dance.
Later on, Generation X
Came to work in a greedy trance.

Peter Gibbons was hypnotized,
To escape his lifeless job,
Destroyed the office as it was downsized,
But was promoted by “the Bobs”.

Some lesson there, for those who strive,
That work alone is not enough.
Attitude is more important to our lives,
That revolt by nothingness is not that tough.

Abbie Hoffman was thrown through windows,
While preaching peace instead of wrath.
Despite nobility of cause, does humanity still go,
The inexorable way of sloth?

Sharon Talbot

Tulip in a Grove, alone in Spring,
Like young girl's hearts, it's a fragile thing.
Too bright for its dark abode:
A brilliant corner on a lonely road.
Petals, like shields, rise up as guards.
For all that lives wants to part
The Tulip from its Spring.

But look, there, in the greenish gloom,
There are other colors in this furtive room.
In twos or threes, they stand apart,
Each guarding their own and another’s heart.
Bright heads like maiden’s reticent mane.
Each shines for the other’s gain.
For Summer comes too soon.

- 2011

Saying “Women of the Night”
Might be alright
As a description for some girls,
They stream eastward
Along the bank,
Checking for marauders and adjusting curls.

Yet courtesans are different;
They came as swiftly as they went,
Called on by important men.
From house and hotel they are borne,
In carriages, and in finery worn,
For those who have a yen.

Yet others still elude one name,
Of condemnation or fame.
They do not wander at men’s whims.
They deliver terms to him or him.
And live in dwellings finer still,
Until the payer has had his fill.

But with the latter does he ever
Tire of the source of pleasure?

For some the need outlasts his want,
And he becomes the supplicant!
Then woman’s wit becomes the master,
While her body wields a whip.
The sinner’s desire speeds still faster,
As she the body’s scale does tip.

The rain is falling, coalescing now
Off the roof onto new blooms.
Dusk slips in with its indigo shroud
And I watch it kiss the purple,
Of the Rhododendron’s earliest flower,
Plucking away Azalea’s last veil,
Hiding her into a bower,

Where summer never ends
And the rain falls when it will;
I would have this all year instead of an end
Where these soft mists know nothing of a chill
But heat and rain,
Sun and shower.

I can still hear raindrops drumming
On a Chinese rebel’s tin roof,
Outside Jakarta and the red guard coming,
We could lapse into hypnosis,
Rapt senses gently humming.

Despite our temperate flowers and leaves
That droop under the deluge.
Their color seems to strengthen as they grieve,
And they cluster, seeking refuge,
Yet from our New England loggia,
A stream turns them darker, a humid green.

And in the slowly deepening dusk,
The trees’ heads toss, agitated,
Like elegant women whose gowns have cost
A tidy sum and now are saturated.
Their full, green plumage lost.

I love the mockingbirds’ changing cries,
Announcing from to squeal to carillon.
Cardinals’ song change from pleasure to pain
Flashing coats of taupe to vermilion.
As the evening slowly dies.

It ends and begins with summer, summer,
Soundless footsteps in the rain.
A prismatic wakening from slumber,
A season with no name.

Under the surface sheen
In the carousel of the surf
And the churned-up foam
Turquoise-coloured drink
And beige dust storm
Swirling down
Brushing against
Corals and polyps
That will die too and
Join the round bodies
Of diatoms.
Stars of the sea,
Celestial show in the deep.
Dancing as they descend,
Toward the inevitable end,
The boundless dark
A plain of mud
Made ghostly by their larks.

Like a slattern in a string bikini,                     
Stretch marks bared to the public,                                                            
So does July show her wares                                                              
If she is scorned.
                                               
Sprawling, ugly, no doubt in heat,                                                      
An old sow past her prime                 
Suffocates
All who pass her by.             
  
Any who see Demeter
In each summer day
Have not seen her dark side,
When men refuse to play.

She is full of hot wrath,
If unspent for weeks on end.
Or cold doldrums, when denied:
Raw, frigid mistress of grey.

Yet, in a good year, she might
Swing Sun’s brazen shield
High above, shedding welcome beams,
And let us bask in its bright rays.

July, you sometime traitor,
When we expect you to behave,
Spend promises of warm weather,
No doubt you demur on that alone.

We await your pleasure,
As brides gnaw manicured nails in
Helpless wonderment at your
Selfish woes.

Month of Caesar, choose one attitude or the other!
Either thirty-one days of rain-soaked sulking
Or, better, allow one of selfless, sun-baked joy…
This might even please poor you!

Sere and yellow,
Rough and round, [bright pebbles in a mound]
Pitted and mellow,
Winding our necks round,
We wore them.

Amber beads unearthed from clay,
Fashioned by my artist love,
Glowing yellow, filled with day,
Captures sunbeams from above.
I still love them.

Some say gods have made these,
To ensnare the light of Sun,
But we women saved these,
In memory & hope of sons,
We keep them.

Fat & smooth as butter,
We turned them in our hands.
The bone beads scraped with madder,
The amber just with sand.

Those of shadowy carnelian
Embedded like a shield,
We treasure as we fear them,
Like wounds on battlefields.

The others soaked with brownish earth,
Sere and yellow,
Rough and round, [bright pebbles in a mound]
Pitted and mellow,
Winding our necks round,
We wore them.

So, when we are dead, take not from us,
These rounded, golden suns,
But bury them with us, with sword and severed buss,
To revere the slaughtered ones,
Who never returned to us.

Revised November 15, 2016