Not a year that went exactly as planned:
melodrama, tragedy and high farce.
Controversial guests that denied the bland
intent of pleasant passage come to pass.
We’ve managed (despite these guests) to cope
with upset, and to patch-up those mistakes
that through repair addressed the slippery slope.
We’ve all learnt something: learnt what it takes
to muddle-on, to pull-back from the brink;
to keep calm; bunker down and take it slow.
With stoic grit, we’ve learnt to neither blink
nor shrink from scandal’s shame or worry’s woe.
. We are the better for adversity.
. So claims the wisdom of perversity.

© Tim Grace, 6 December 2012

To the reader: I worked with a colleague who muddled his way through a year of workplace calamities. Piles of paperwork spilled over his desk; nothing got finished; technologies failed, and deadlines passed. With such hopeless organisational skills, other staff watched-on in dismay. His boss gave up all hope of a supervised solution; so the problem just got worse. The disconnect widened and office isolation became entrenched.

To the poet: I left a card somewhere on his desk. An end-of-year message that added precarious height to an existing pile of paper. And so began this sonnet. It’s not about ‘him’ more informed by his various predicaments. His office isolation (somewhat self-imposed) reminded me of brackets. Brackets (here exampled) recognise a necessary petition of parts; inclusive features, distinct in nature… describes him well.

Desk Mess(age)
Picture Source:
http://youtu.be/zqQby6sZ2rU