While You Were Out Poem by Ernest Hilbert

For Jessica Caum

Keyboards click, phone lines light up, and before
She's started it's noon, then late, then too late,
And she won't ever catch up entirely.
It seems so much is at stake, but the floor
Thins out, doors lock, the deftly scribbled slate
Is brushed blank; lobbies clear, boardrooms empty,
Leaving the day's tally, sum, and remainder.
She looks up from the desk to find light gone
Again; thinks of early friends gone distant,
Prospects departed, like an ending summer,
When, in the chill, she could lie on the lawn,
Unable to recall how the months were spent,
When lightning poured rivulets of blue light
And ended, far off, before she saw it.