Countdown

The days of the 2011-2012 school year are dwindling away.  The marathon that is the weeks from spring break to the last day of school is amazing.  Seems we have to celebrate the end of everything – clubs, classes, sports seasons – with some kind of cake or certificate or both.  There are summer plans and days of reading just for pleasure being anticipated.  My kids have started a countdown. 

The noun countdown is defined at dictionary.com
1.  the backward counting in fixed time units from the initiation of a project, as a rocket launch, with the moment of firing designated zero.
2.  the final preparations made during this period.
3.  a period of increasing activity, tension, and anxiety, as before a deadline.

How often do we employ this action in our lives, marking the time until the end of what we are doing?  Wading through the increased activity to get everything finished?  Unlike waiting for a rocket to launch, we are waiting for something to reach completion.  It may be one work day, one family meal, the week before a wedding, a final exam, a project.  It can be exciting to see something come to fruition but I’d sure like to skip the rise in tension and anxiety!  Sometimes we just want some certain thing to be over and done. 

Waking to Monday having flurried through every minute of the weekend, I am tired and my brain does not want to write a poem today.  But I gave myself five more minutes to get started five minutes ago and they passed as I knew they would. 

Backward Counting

FIVE more minutes, the eternal cry

of the mother who read proper through

proffered psychology texts tends to provide

appropriate transition for her youth before saying goodbye

FOUR ounces of milk measured means

mini muffins will bake to tiny tasty tantalizing

trickster treats for teeny tots who haven’t yet tasted

icing, sticky sweet substance tendering true sugar desire

THREE fingers finding vertical

from a tight fist allowing everyone time

to calm down and find their places before something

hits the fan and sprays foul sounding syllables to the sky

TWO tick tock hours from dinner

to bed where each sleepy head will become

quiet and still, teetering into tardy nighttime trances

the day passed in such speed spinning tales to tell tomorrow

ONE more minute the eternal yen

of any playtime finding its end, looking ahead

to departing friends and the fun that follows them away

leaving senses conjecturing, in result of the race what was won

ZERO