Exiles

Leaving the office late last night
I passed by harshly lit co-worker cubicles,
All the carefully framed photos of smiling children,
Of loved ones,
Precisely placed,
Reassurance during the long working day,
A bond of love in our lives.

We are exiles,
Returning home for a few exhausted hours
To again be husbands and wives,
Parents and children,
Families.

Together again
For those precious few hours
That work allows.


~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

The Idea

He would win the Nobel Prize

For his contributions to the origin of the universe,

But first,

His wife needs him to fix a leaky faucet.

He has to go to the hardware store.

So frustrating,

So many interruptions,

Right when his calculations begin to coalesce,

When they begin to speak.

But first,

His wife needs him to remove his laundry

From the washer

To make room for her clothing.

Then the cat barfs on the rug in his den,

Which makes him jurisdictionally responsible

For the cleanup.  

Now his coffee is cold,

And his stomach is rumbling because he forgot to eat,

Being seized by an idea,

The idea,

Perhaps the missing piece of the cosmological puzzle.

But first,

His chatty neighbor is ringing the doorbell.

She’s brought a bag of homegrown tomatoes

And quickly engages his wife in inane conversation,

Focused on her observations

Of the meaningless exploits of the neighbors.

She rambles on in exhausting detail.

He retreats to his den,

Having second thoughts about working from home.

Since he does not require a laboratory for his work,

It seemed like a good idea,

At first.

Now, back to his theorem,

The missing piece,

It seemed like such an obvious idea,

Once it broke through the maze of spurious speculations.

O yes, the missing piece,

The solution. 

 

“Oh God,” he cries out,

Suddenly realizing he forgot to write it down.

His deep despair suddenly startled

By the frantic ringing of the landline.

His wife will not answer the phone.

She never answers the phone,

Even though it’s usually someone for her.

She’s busy playing the piano,

Reproducing classical pieces in fits and starts,

Repeating difficult passages over and over.

He answers the phone.

The sunlight begins to dim.

His intellectual energy begins to wane.

Perhaps it would be best to close his notebooks,

Wait until tomorrow and get an early start.

With a good night’s sleep

Perhaps the idea will once again reveal itself.

And besides,

It’s nearly time to walk the dog.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Failure And Success

What seems so clearly to be failure
Will turn out to be only part of what happened.
What seems so clearly to be success
Will turn out to be only part of what happened.
The story of your life is so much more complex
Than the simple words:
Failure,
Success.

Leave this shorthand to the obituary writers
Who are compelled to sum up a life
In cold, calculating column inches.

Do not dwell on failure.
Do not dwell on success.
Live in the heart of each moment
And behold the terrible majesty of it all.


~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Searching For Sugar

This solitary ant walks across the desert
Of my bathroom floor,
Stopping,
Then starting,
Then stopping and starting,
Over and over,
Slight course corrections,
Searching for scent.

The sugar bowl is in another country,
In the land of kitchen,
In a high cupboard,
High above the floor
Where another solitary ant,
Finding a few grains of spilled sugar,
Sensing the source is near,
Needing neither hope nor faith,
Continues.


~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved