irritation

Interesting. I realise that I'm still angry about someone at work today saying that the minutes I took of a recent meeting were inaccurate in how I'd phrased something -- despite the fact that I read a summary after each item at the meeting, and it was agreed to by those there. (Mainly so I would avoid argument later when it came to what we'd actually decided.)

I feel very petty to be annoyed over so little. I touch it with my mind and it's still a source of irritation. It's that how dare she reflex which touches off so easily.

It'll be gone soon enough, but it irritates me that I can be irritated so easily.

---

Atavism

1
Sometimes in the open you look up
where birds go by, or just nothing,
and wait. A dim feeling comes
you were like this once, there was air,
and quiet; it was by a lake, or
maybe a river you were alert
as an otter and were suddenly born
like the evening star into wide
still worlds like this one you have found
again, for a moment, in the open.

2
Something is being told in the woods: aisles of
shadow lead away; a branch waves;
a pencil of sunlight slowly travels its
path. A withheld presence almost
speaks, but then retreats, rustles
a patch of brush. You can feel
the centuries ripple generations
of wandering, discovering, being lost
and found, eating, dying, being born.
A walk through the forest strokes your fur,
the fur you no longer have. And your gaze
down a forest aisle is a strange, long
plunge, dark eyes looking for home.
For delicious minutes you can feel your whiskers
wider than your mind, away out over everything.

-- William Stafford