It is not only that tedium devours
all of the menial hours,
but that boredom has its own mass,
curving space as hours pass,
slowing hours into protracted stays
until they feel more like days.
Boredom, thus, has a terrible gravity,
relentless and without pity,
orbiting every idle mind
that attempts, in vain, to find
the escape pod for swift flight
away from that looming satellite
and its distortion of Newtonian law,
Einstein jabbering his jaw
to say “No object at rest is truly at rest”
and boredom, too, passes that test,
for boredom is never ever settled
no matter how nettled
we are by its cycles, phases, and shifts
or the way time drifts
slowly, like the moon-dragged tide
while we toil and wait and abide.