Now that I'm retired, a quiet life is what I want. I want to do the things I enjoy doing, to watch my grandchildren grow up, to write my blog and the occasional letter, to read, and to tend my little garden. What I desire in life isn't a properly boiled egg ... although this poem by Baron Wormser makes the contemplation of that egg seem pretty interesting ...
A Quiet Life
What a person desires in life
is a properly boiled egg.
This isn’t as easy as it seems.
There must be gas and a stove,
the gas requires pipelines, mastodon drills,
banks that dispense the lozenge of capital.
There must be a pot, the product of mines
and furnaces and factories,
of dim early mornings and night-owl shifts,
of women in kerchiefs and men with
sweat-soaked hair.
Then water, the stuff of clouds and skies
and God knows what causes it to happen.
There seems always too much or too little
of it and more pipelines, meters, pumping
stations, towers, tanks.
And salt-a miracle of the first order,
the ace in any argument for God.
Only God could have imagined from
nothingness the pang of salt.
Political peace too. It should be quiet
when one eats an egg. No political hoodlums
knocking down doors, no lieutenants who are
ticked off at their scheming girlfriends and
take it out on you, no dictators
posing as tribunes.
It should be quiet, so quiet you can hear
the chicken, a creature usually mocked as a type
of fool, a cluck chained to the chore of her body.
Listen, she is there, pecking at a bit of grain
that came from nowhere.
I think I may have a nice boiled egg for breakfast, but without all the ruminations about how it got to the table. If I think too long, my coffee will get cold.
Have a good day. See you tomorrow for Musical Monday. More thoughts then.
Bilbo
6 comments:
I like the poem. It's contemplative of the order of things underlying things.
Sometimes it's enough to enjoy and savor, and not be at one with the cosmos.
Fun to think about the egg and how much goes into the preparation. Then there are soft boiled and hard boiled eggs, just a few minutes in between those outcomes.
I love a good boiled egg, usually with toast. I now have an extra appreciation for them. Nice poem.
A well-boiled egg is worth a poem.
The supply line of life is long.
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