Sunday, July 29, 2007

With All This Time

There not much I can really do right now other than read and get some writing done, but with a horribly hour-ed job (8am to 10:30am AND THEN 6pm to 8:30pm) and the pending move this week, my concentration has gone out the window. I move this week, people have been leaving town left and what, all the new MFAs are coming in some time this week...and I'm taking a motorcycle class.

I was all frustrated yesterday because I wanted to buy a helmet and avoid using the "class helmets" with moist lingering funk, and every store in town closed at 4. However, driving home, and kinda pissed, I had to stop for a goose crossing. Like 30 geese walking across the street. There was a little gap that I thought I could get across, but when I inched forward, the bird opened his mouth and walked faster. I lost it. It was the best laugh I've had in days--I have to start bringing my camera with me.

My heart's been set on a Vespa (with a side-car, pleaseandthankyou!) but I'm learning on a Honda Nighthawk, but I think I'd like to find a Triumph. And so, a poem for y'all. Pretend that title refers to the motorcycle:

My Triumph

by John Greenleaf Whittier

The autumn-time has come;
On woods that dream of bloom,
And over purpling vines,
The low sun fainter shines.

The aster-flower is failing,
The hazel’s gold is paling;
Yet overhead more near
The eternal stars appear!

And present gratitude
Insures the future’s good,
And for the things I see
I trust the things to be;

That in the paths untrod,
And the long days of God,
My feet shall still be led,
My heart be comforted.

O living friends who love me!
O dear ones gone above me!
Careless of other fame,
I leave to you my name.

Hide it from idle praises,
Save it from evil phrases:
Why, when dear lips that spake it
Are dumb, should strangers wake it?

Let the thick curtain fall;
I better know than all
How little I have gained,
How vast the unattained.

Not by the page word-painted
Let life be banned or sainted:
Deeper than written scroll
The colors of the soul.

Sweeter than any sung
My songs that found no tongue;
Nobler than any fact
My wish that failed of act.

Others shall sing the song,
Others shall right the wrong,—
Finish what I begin,
And all I fail of win.

What matter, I or they?
Mine or another’s day,
So the right word be said
And life the sweeter made?

Hail to the coming singers!
Hail to the brave light-bringers!
Forward I reach and share
All that they sing and dare.

The airs of heaven blow o’er me;
A glory shines before me
Of what mankind shall be,—
Pure, generous, brave, and free.

A dream of man and woman
Diviner but still human,
Solving the riddle old,
Shaping the Age of Gold!

The love of God and neighbor;
An equal-handed labor;
The richer life, where beauty
Walks hand in hand with duty.

Ring, bells in unreared steeples,
The joy of unborn peoples!
Sound, trumpets far off blown,
Your triumph is my own!

Parcel and part of all,
I keep the festival,
Fore-reach the good to be,
And share the victory.

I feel the earth move sunward,
I join the great march onward,
And take, by faith, while living,
My freehold of thanksgiving.

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