At The Staff Retreat 1991

At the conference center
The staff retreat glides on:
Flip charts rustle, paradigms shift.
Outside the picture window
Snow falls hypnotically in the woods:
My screen saver.

Memos float mindlessly
Table to table.
A message passes somewhere
Between eye and mind;
I affix initials and pass it on
To the low drone of
Speakers making earnest points,
The furnace cutting on and off:
So what I hear us saying is...
Soon another note appears:
"This does not apply to you.
Erase your initials
And initial the erasure."

Robert H. Demaree Jr.

Archived 01/19/2012