Poetry About Mediocrity

In a report finished exactly at five, mediocrity finds a visible shape. Dust settling on an unused instrument carries what ordinary speech leaves unfinished. Between safe answers filling the meeting room and a sketch abandoned before revision, the heart learns to listen. Ordinary work is not failure, but fear can make smallness a habit, though the day rarely says so aloud. By night, one brave attempt beyond competence becomes a promise rather than an ending.

Dust settling on an unused instrument enters the poem first. Mediocrity follows, neither symbol nor explanation, but weather. A sketch abandoned before revision keeps the difficult measure. We stand near a report finished exactly at five and let certainty loosen. Ordinary work is not failure, but fear can make smallness a habit. One brave attempt beyond competence remains after the room grows quiet.

Someone remembers safe answers filling the meeting room. Someone else names a report finished exactly at five and means an entire life. Mediocrity moves between them with patient hands. Dust settling on an unused instrument refuses to become only background. Ordinary work is not failure, but fear can make smallness a habit. At last, one brave attempt beyond competence gives the silence somewhere to rest.