I don’t normally post poetry on my work pages, but this one seems to fit here as well as on my poetry page, each in a different context.

Tom

The Off Season

It is cold. There is snow on the ground.
There is snow in the sky, falling.
It is dark and grey.

Christmas is out there,
sneaking up on us,
and then a new year.

It is a quiet time.
The phones don’t ring.
and I am left to think.

What to do?
What to do differently?
What needs to change to become

what I want to become
next?
There’s always something.

and too easy, clinging to what is,
I become a victim of fate,
stuck, or worse, descending,

And so I think. I look at myself
and my world and my dreams.
(yes, I have them, even at my age.)

and in the stillness,
I change, often so subtly no one notices,
and we are all left to wonder

how
and why
everything

changed.
,

About this poem.

It is a slow time for me at work, Clients typically take the last couple of weeks off from our work together and I am left with more time on my hands than normal. I like to use this quiet time to look at my life and work and think in terms of change. What can I change to be better? To accomplish more? To be closer to the person I want to be,

Change requires change. No matter what we want, more money, personal growth, more life balance, vibrant creativity, more influence in the world around us; or if we are a company, more profits, growth, a thriving corporate culture, more innovation, better marketing…. no matter what we want, something has to change,

I am in the change business. And this I know. We can choose our change, or it chooses us. Generally, it’s better if we choose the change.

My changes are rarely radical. But I work at them, and somewhere along the year, I look back and those small changes have had big results.

Always.

Tom