All those times I was bored <br />out of my mind. Holding the log <br />while he sawed it. Holding <br />the string while he measured, boards, <br />distances between things, or pounded <br />stakes into the ground for rows and rows <br />of lettuces and beets, which I then (bored) <br />weeded. Or sat in the back <br />of the car, or sat still in boats, <br />sat, sat, while at the prow, stern, wheel <br />he drove, steered, paddled. It <br />wasn't even boredom, it was looking, <br />looking hard and up close at the small <br />details. Myopia. The worn gunwales, <br />the intricate twill of the seat <br />cover. The acid crumbs of loam, the granular <br />pink rock, its igneous veins, the sea-fans <br />of dry moss, the blackish and then the graying <br />bristles on the back of his neck. <br />Sometimes he would whistle, sometimes <br />I would. The boring rhythm of doing <br />things over and over, carrying <br />the wood, drying <br />the dishes. Such minutiae. It's what <br />the animals spend most of their time at, <br />ferrying the sand, grain by grain, from their tunnels, <br />shuffling the leaves in their burrows. He pointed <br />such things out, and I would look <br />at the whorled texture of his square finger, earth under <br />the nail. Why do I remember it as sunnier <br />all the time then, although it more often <br />rained, and more birdsong? <br />I could hardly wait to get <br />the hell out of there to <br />anywhere else. Perhaps though <br />boredom is happier. It is for dogs or <br />groundhogs. Now I wouldn't be bored. <br />Now I would know too much. <br />Now I would know.<br /><br />Margaret Atwood<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/bored/
