Pesky

Pesky

Listen to the squeak of the windmill,
the small one, the wrought iron black blades
turning with the wind vane’s direction.
Let it become the rhythm in your brain,
the top layer of thought and ideation.

Do you follow its whining to discover the source;
Search nearby roofs and fences, abandon your chores?

(For, we have all hated that moment, like a foul fly
we could kill with the slightest pressure, who still buzzes
about our faces unfazed; a miniaturized bully. Its
distraction becomes our obsession. Nothing well be
complete
until rid the room of the bug. The pest becomes
pestilence in a mere moment.)

Compelled by the nagging squeal, the squeaky wheel
begs my full attention. With so much to do, so many
neurons to fill with messages to my feet to walk,
my arms to bend, my fingers to tap the end of my shovel
I’ve carried the whole way searching for this siren.
How, while the synapses fire the words for my writing,
can I be so uninvited the list of five primary tasks that
I chase the fan-like hum of some propeller clasped by
the roofline of an attic.

Shall I say, at the end of the day, that nothing was accomplished,
and what I began at the beginning still waited in my office
at midmorning with coffee
by the time the wind stopped at evening; the evidence
retreated, the source of the squeak silent as pre-storm,
save for the whirring that stayed in my head.