Year’s End Doldrums / by Brian Kunde

Year’s End Doldrums
by Brian Kunde

No hands on clacking keyboards time the hours;
No squeaking book-trucks trundle to and fro;
No rush requests remain to try our powers;
No meetings now impede our labor’s flow.
What happened to the people? Gone, each face;
Unheard now, each familiar step and voice;
All vanished are the haunters of this place,
Departed, as by universal choice.
A paltry handful only now remain.
The embers in the ashes of the fire,
To chill and bank and then themselves refrain—
Shut down, switch off, lock up, and too retire.
The hunt’s blown home: the hound’s left off the chase.
The hold-outs hold no longer. Gone, each face.

* * * * *

Year’s End Doldrums

from Bibliotec(hnic)a : Poems, Sep. 24, 2013.
An earlier version appeared in
SUL News Notes, v. 3, no. 47, Dec. 22, 1994.

1st web edition posted 5/15/2014.