Unintentional Poem

In my email today:

Reminder: send feedback by EOD
If we're all agreed, I'll start ASAP.

I tweaked only three words to make the meter scan....

Apology

I have eaten
the organic apple
that B & T brought us on Sunday
as a gift

and which
was next to the persimmons
we gathered
on our bike ride

and carried
home in our pockets.
No need to forgive me -
I am sure you don't mind.

:)

Non-Work Haiku

Chaos in focus.
Days and evenings both filled up:
nostalgia, content.

Tomatoes are ripe
Cheese & bread become dinner
No cooking needed.

Cats live down the street
Dark graceful forms yowl at night
All else is silent.

Fans blowing all night
Record highs through next Sunday
Heat wave here at last!

Work Haiku

My Calendar's full
Progress update requested:
All meetings, no work!

Best case? Four hours,
empty room, no distractions.
Unlikely daydream.

Design doc delayed
Engineers not committed
Tonight I stay late.

Thursday night

Exhaustion and heat osmose in, lazily, through the floor-height glass-paned windows.
Today the air conditioner is off, and I am stuck at 7 pm
to the fabric of my black desk chair
by an upcoming conference call with India - twelve and one half
hours ahead of me around the world.

The air conditioner is off. We turn the thermostat down
and email Facilities (who we suspect go home at 5 pm, day in and out,
their lives untroubled by product launches - but perhaps
there are other consolations, new cafes and traffic flow to solve).
There is no answer.

We eat take-out Thai food from recyclable corn-based cardboard boxes
in the coolest conference room we can find.
(It's on Facilities' side of the building. Go figure.)
The room smells of hot grease and dry-erase marker; the early evening sun
glares on the projector screen but we, rebellious, refuse to close the blinds.

The phone rings: India, and a dual-continented policy discussion
taking place simultaneously at night and morning.
Can we ever really agree? We all knew each other in the same context
before the India office opened. "It's hot here," we in California say,
but we know, this time of year, it's really hotter in Hyderabad.