A dozen tasks traipse through my head
as I lie silent on my bed.
It's sugar plums I wish would dance;
they hold a good deal more romance
than deadlines, proofs and printer's woes.
But thus it is, and so it goes.
It's not the first night, heaven knows,
when work intrudes upon my rest
and stacks its folders on my chest
and shouts, "Today we go to press!"
"Enough!" I cry and sit upright,
"You have my day, but not the night!
Get out each tick from my 'to-do.'
Right now I have no need of you!"
I herd them out, return to bed
and on my pillow rest my head.
And as I hoped, those sugar plums
return to caper, leap and spin--
and do not let the job list in.
"Relax," they say, "life's so much more
than what awaits outside the door."
Text and image © 2014 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.