Five Minutes of Sunday

Written by David Joël La Boon

Sundays breathe loneliness and breathe out emptiness.
They are a sentiment, but a pervasive one.
They hug the last frontier of defined time, fencing
Our uncertain selves in a context in motion.

Warm drinks, old films, falling commas, and rising smoke,
Smell of gochu and banchan, the rumble of sports,
Scattered last kisses, fond memories, future dread,
And unfinished work all squat within our Sundays.

Sunday is perception, but more, a returning
Realization that you are more incapable,
Older and cautious, less reckless and more fearful.
. . . That’s when you feel its meaning. Suddenly.

And as Sunday’s peculiarity molds and then
Sinks into your flesh, there are hardly mysteries
On Sundays that don’t seep a lovely nostalgia
To the rest of the week eyed through dusty blinds and
Curtains. Coffee is my five minutes of Sunday.

The Author
David Joël La Boon is a poet and artist. His formal artistic training came from tutelage under his grandfather, Forest Steinlage, who specialized in oil paintings of the riverboat culture and American industrialization, and is showcased in the Howard Steamboat Museum. He was a showcase artist during Seattle Art Week in 2015. His forays into poetry are an attempt at redefinition, which had begun while attending L’Institut d’Études Sciences Politiques de Paris. He is a founding member of La Société de Pensée, a literary and artistic society with chapters in Seattle and Washington, DC, and currently sits on the editorial board of the Seoul National University Journal of International Affairs. Gwangju is his home away from home.