A Job Half Done OR Planet of the Apes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

Have you ever began working on something you don’t really believe in, but felt you had no choice... so  puting any finishing touches to the task in hand was never really on the cards?  You may well have fought against it, given that many if not most of us are inclined to do whatever for a quiet life especially if it means being nagged to get on with it. Yet, at the end of the day, it is not certain people who persist in nagging at us but the lack of those very finishing touches itself; it leaves us feeling not only dissatisfied with our work, but also questioning our resistance to properly completing the job in the first place...so much so sometimes that we find ourselves, if not coming round to that to same point of view with which we found ourselves at loggerheads, at least able to enter into it, grasp something of where it was coming from - to the extent, more often than not, that we cannot leave the job unfinished if only because our hearts tell us it's the right thing to do, even if we are never quite sure why.

Oh, we may choose to put it all down to pride in a job well done, but at heart we may well suspect it is more than that; whether or not we choose to look any further, though, that is down to a sense of conscience we may or may not prefer to own; it is in the latter wherein lies a job but half done, and likely to nag us for the best part of a lifetime...although if it means we never stop asking questions - of ourselves and humanity in general - it may not be such a bad thing after all...

‘What an ugly beast the ape, and how like us.’ – Cicero (106 BC - 43 BC)

A JOB HALF DONE or PLANET OF THE APES

Builder, pondering

a job half done, frowning

under a baseball cap...

(So , what he’s looking at?)

Eco-warriors, armed

with principles in defence 
of treasured open spaces
being eroded by developers
reaping the rewards
of feeding bricks and mortar
to human apes homing in

on concrete jungles, parodies
of natural worlds

Builder, pondering

a job half done, distant grin

under a baseball cap…

(So what's he’s looking at?)

Not scaffolding  

for brand new offices meant

to keep fat cats happy

once staff won over to the view

that a bird in the hand

is worth two in any hedgerow,

and he should know

with a wife, three kids, behind

with the mortgage

Builder at work

on a job half done, furrows

under a baseball cap…

(Now what’s he looking at?)

Towers, like trees, in skies

where birds fly like toy airplanes
and drop like skydivers

on the backs of eco-warriors

guarding nature’s own

from fat cats on the make

that don’t care, can walk away.

a job well done. time to move on 
to the next land grab

Copyright R. N. Taber 2004; 2014

[Note: revised (2014) from an earlier version that appears under the title A Job Half Done in The Third Eye by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2004.]