Wednesday Poetry Break

I had planned to write a post about how fast the weekend flew by, and here it is already Wednesday. I’m starting to understand that you can’t count on big chunks of money or time being there later. Every year when I wait for my tax refund I think “This year [insert large trip, expensive remodeling, lasik surgery]”  but then once the bills are all paid there is no surplus and we’re back to thinking: “Next year …” .

Weekends are kind of like that for me. As Friday approaches I always think about 99 bazillion things that I will be doing on my two days off from work and from commuting. But then, there is a car accident (not me, and no one was seriously hurt), and a drunken bender (also not me, and not related to the car accident), there is shopping, there is cleaning, there is an all day affair on Sunday for my father’s 90th birthday.

Don’t get me wrong — any day you can kiss your father on the cheek and wish him Happy Birthday is a good, good day. But all these other things of everyday life, they put me in a sort of a daze where there’s very little room for creativity. How does anyone do it? And the of course, I begin perusing poems for today’s post and am once again reminded that the lack of time itself has been a subject for creativity souls — probably since the first humanoid picked up a stick and drew a line in the dirt. And then there’s Shakespeare.

Sonnet XIX: Devouring Time, Blunt thou the Lion’s Paws

By William Shakespeare

Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion’s paws,

And make the earth devour her own sweet brood;

Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger’s jaws,

And burn the long-liv’d Phoenix in her blood;

Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleets,

And do whate’er thou wilt, swift-footed Time,

To the wide world and all her fading sweets;

But I forbid thee one more heinous crime:

O, carve not with the hours my love’s fair brow,

Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen!

Him in thy course untainted do allow

For beauty’s pattern to succeeding men.

Yet do thy worst, old Time! Despite thy wrong

My love shall in my verse ever live young.

From The PoetryFoundation.org

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