Mundane Monday

Mundane Monday / Jesse Keith Butler

Another mundane Monday brings
stale coffee and an early meeting.
There’s mercy in the midst of things—
it’s often absent, though it sends
an out-of-office email that
is full of words that look important.
I’m somehow still left feeling flat
            when mundane Monday ends.

The printer’s jammed, and tech support
has never been all that supportive.
I work by hand to stack and sort
the briefings, while my mind ascends
to all I’d like to make and share,
and how I’ll fill with work and value
the bleary hour I’ll have to spare
            when mundane Monday ends.

We crowd to get aboard the bus
at 5 PM, or sometimes later.
They’d never hold a space for us:
No, not for anyone who spends
their rationed days on this bright earth
adhering to a filing system.
We’ll all know what our time was worth
            when mundane Monday ends.

The days seem like a cycle, but
more often they just build momentum
that spills toward I-don’t-know-what—
I guess as always it depends
on how we meet the slow despair
that greets us by the water cooler.
These choices will be with us there
            when mundane Monday ends.

They say they’ll know us by our fruits
but sometimes growth won’t see the surface.
When pruned back did we put down roots?
Or is this bitterness that bends
in on itself how we’ll receive
the grace of being ordinary?
The shape we hold here’s how we’ll leave
            when mundane Monday ends.

Mundane Monday: Copyright 2021 by Jesse K. Butler. All rights reserved.