an office worker takes her lunch

{Imitating the poem "Worked Late on a Tuesday Night" by Deborah Garrison}

An Office Worker Takes Her Lunch

Late.
Suburbia is ordered and driven,
crammed with the crowd and its checklist for the day.
I sidestep the leftovers-at-the-desk lunch
some eat indoors as they click aimlessly
or scroll through email—the jagged
projects, the livid to-dos, firm deadlines ablaze
in the Q3 projections as we drill down here and there
in the midst of the revenue stream.

Never thought you'd be one of them,
did you, little writer?
Little Miss I Love Jane Austen,
with your bookshelves of alphabetized
classics, reading all day for as long as we both shall
live! Can't you see?
The smart career girl turns inward,
soul-ward, humming the hum of cared-for creativity
all 9 to 5 long, sitting for a lunch hour

outside. So at 2:00 PM
you're lying in the grass
with a book in your hand,
hot but too absorbed to pull your blanket
into the shade by the parking lot's one tree, forgetting
the afternoon's tasks as though they were
not your job. It's delectable,
and nobody can fault you for
wanting your own life both ways. Now

the grown-up,
buttoned-up white collar.
Career, career, but still with a soul-gaping desire.
I've had my lunch late; I'm just about
what I meant to be.
Among other things, a writer
who scratches beauty. And ready, this afternoon,
to face again the computer.