Monday, June 11, 2012

Detour - Expect Delays




Today's offering is obviously a summer poem, but it represents a "philosophy" ... an outlook ... which can be adopted almost any day of the year.


I think it was written on just one of those lazy, hazy, steamy days when I felt the backlog was secure ... no danger of avalanche, at least for the moment ... more important things, those pressing chores from day before yesterday ... and beyond ... could just wait their turn.


I think it's OK to do that sometimes ... to take time to look up from our everyday chores to see what's happening all around us ... the hollyhocks ... the cardinal ... the sunflowers.


Of course, the backlog will still be waiting ... but we can then approach it with the feeling that we're a little more evenly matched now. Try it. It works.


The poem:


DETOUR - EXPECT DELAYS


I have chores
to do, but it's such
a distracting day,
hollyhocks cupping
morning sunlight,
a cardinal swaying
in the evergreen,
a jury of sunflowers
eyeing me suspiciously,
as well they might,
for I, too, may just
follow the sun
the rest of the day.
© 1999

(originally published in Capper's)

Today's word: backlog

1 comment:

Helen in Miami said...

I do love this! I feel better about everything after reading it.
I'd forgotten about hollyhocks, yet, growing up it was my favorite flower. We made dolls out of clothes pins and made skirts out of the hollyhock blossoms. If you'd been a close neighbor (at the top of the Boskeydell Rd.) you'd have been forced into playing with them, too...boy or not.
I have a favor to ask of you. Could I use have your permission to use that car mirror photo in a painting? One of my not-so-recent memories, was going back home, and parking at a shopping center. A cardinal came up before I could get out and perched himself on my cardoor mirror and looked down and admired himself for a very long time. I finally decided I had to shoo him off and open the car door and get out of the car. I hated to, but my admiration for him had to come to a halt, except for the snapshot in my mind--no camera with me.
Bob, I haven't found a poem of yours yet, that I didn't like a lot, and in a different way each time.