More Synchronicity ...
I subscribe to an email from the poet, Roger Housten, that I receive every two weeks or so and yesterday I received this one - such synchronicity ...
Hi ,
Our culture is so fixated on the necessity of doing that if we are idle for a while we are very likely to have the thought that we are wasting our lives. But I don't think that's what Wright means in that shocking last line. I think he means the opposite - that doing nothing for a while is precisely a gateway to another life, one deeper and more alive than our usual busy-ness; and that we shall have wasted our lives if we never allow ourselves these spaces in which another kind of fulfillment emerges. He is lying in his hammock, and realizes how little time he has given to moments of blessedness like this. But what do you think he means?
Our culture is so fixated on the necessity of doing that if we are idle for a while we are very likely to have the thought that we are wasting our lives. But I don't think that's what Wright means in that shocking last line. I think he means the opposite - that doing nothing for a while is precisely a gateway to another life, one deeper and more alive than our usual busy-ness; and that we shall have wasted our lives if we never allow ourselves these spaces in which another kind of fulfillment emerges. He is lying in his hammock, and realizes how little time he has given to moments of blessedness like this. But what do you think he means?
Warmly, Roger
Lying in a Hammock at
William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island Minnesota
James Wright
Over my head I see the bronze butterfly
asleep on the black trunk,
blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down in the ravine behind the empty house
the cowbells follow one another
into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
in a field of sunlight between two pines,
the droppings of last year's horses
blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.
Stunning...
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