Poetry Saturday

Because I'm late for Friday.

I found this poem while looking for a Robert Service poem about daydreaming. I still haven't found the original one, but the moment I read the first stanza of this one, I was in love. This poem hit me right in the gut. It says so many things I want to say, particularly about how my job and my values clash. Sadly I know nothing about John Boyle O'Reilly, except that he lived from 1844 to 1890 and was an big Irish rights activist. I'll have to read more of his work. His tone sounds a lot like Service.

The Cry of the Dreamer
by John Boyle O'Reilly

I am tired of planning and toiling
In the crowded hives of men:
Heart-weary of building and spoiling,
And spoiling and building again.
And I long for the dear old river,
Where I dreamed my youth away;
For a dreamer lives forever,
And a toiler dies in a day.

I am sick of the showy seeming
Of a life that is half a lie;
Of the faces lined with scheming
In the throng that hurries by.
From the sleepless thoughts' endeavour,
I would go where the children play;
For a dreamer lives forever,
And a thinker dies in a day.

I can feel no pride, but pity
For the burdens the rich endure;
There is nothing sweet in the city
But the patient lives of the poor.
Oh, the little hands too skillful,
And the child-mind choked with weeds!
The daughter's heart grown willful,
And the father's heart that bleeds!

No, no! from the street's rude bustle,
From the trophies of mart and stage,
I would fly to the woods' low rustle
And the meadows' kindly page.
Let me dream as of old by the river,
And be loved for the dream alway;
For a dreamer lives forever,
And a toiler dies in a day.

Poetry Friday

Apparently I forgot that I had a blog. Sorry about that. My world has been a bit busy lately. Hopefully it will slow down soon. But for today, a poem. I found this on one of the other blogs I read. I have to read more of this man's work. Half-poem, half zen koan, I read this and am at peace. Now to find some woods.

The Peace of Wild Things
by Wendell Barry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Spine Poetry

A couple of bloggers that I follow have been doing book spine poetry in preparation for April which is National Poetry Month. I had some time this evening and thought I'd try it. It was much more fun than I expected. Here is my poem, called Books.

Books
by Cat's Library

Books,
a pound of paper,
fragile things,
the road to dreams and
the wellspring.
Shelf life,
slipping into paradise,
a place of my own.
A passion for books,
the geography of bliss.

Try it at home with your books. I bet you can find some fun and interesting combinations. And let me know what great poetry you create.

Vivamus atque amemus

As Catullus says, "Let us Live and Love".

Happy Valentine's Day all!. I don't really celebrate the holiday the way Hallmark wants me to but I do like a bit of love in my February. I think the world always needs a bit more love. So tonight I'll read Neil Gaiman's twisted Harlequin Valentine short story and I'll break out a bit of poetry. A friend of mine got me started with the great Roman love poems. Here is the famous (perhaps infamous) love poet Catullus with Poem 5.

Let us live my Lesbia and love
and value at one penny
all the talk of stern old men
Suns can set and rise again
we, when once our brief light has set
must sleep one never ending night

Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred 
then a second thousand, then a second hundred
then yet another thousand then a hundred
Then when we have made up many thousands
we will wreck the count
least we know it or
any devil have power to cast an evil eye upon us
when he knows the total of our kisses.

Original Latin:
Vivamus mea Lesbia, atque amemus,
rumoresque senum severiorum
omnes unius aestimemus assis!
soles occidere et redire possunt:
nobis cum semel occidit brevis lux,
nox est perpetua una dormienda.
da mi basia mille, deinde centum,
dein mille altera, dein secunda centum,
deinde usque altera mille, deinde centum.
dein, cum milia multa fecerimus,
conturbabimus illa, ne sciamus,
aut ne quis malus inuidere possit,
cum tantum sciat esse basiorum.

Poetry Friday

I've been reading a lot of  Billy Collins lately. And I mean a lot. Collins writes perfect poems to read when you don't have a lot of time and want to dip in occasionally. I have a copy of his Sailing Alone Around the Room on my dining room table. I pick it up when I have a moment, open to a random page and fall into Collins world. He's a poet that mixes humor and poignancy. When I read his work, I'm transported to a calmer more enjoyable world, normally his house. His focus on home resonates with me. I just love his work. But I probably shouldn't explain so much about it. As he points out in this poem, we often think too hard about poetry.

Introduction to Poetry
by Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a rubber hose
to find out what it really means.

Poetry Friday

Since I haven't been posting regularly, I haven't done a poetry friday in a while. So here we go. I have this poem saved on my computer at home. I struggle with it occasionally. It both energizes me and depresses me. Let me know what you think of it.


A Psalm of Life
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
(what the Heart of the Young Man Said to the Psalmist)

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
   "Life is but an empty dream!"
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
   And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
   And the grave is not its goal;
"Dust thou art, to dust returnest,"
   Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
   Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each tomorrow
   Finds us farther than today.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
   And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
   Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,
   In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
   Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
   Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act, --act in the living Present!
   Heart within, and God o'erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
   We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
   Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
   Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
   Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
   With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing
   Learn to labor and to wait.

Passion and Madness

I've been drinking cheap red wine in the bathtub which means that this will be more maudlin and romantic then I mean it to be. It never fails. Give me a bottle of red wine and I will write you sonnets. Or at least feverishly slave away with words like the great poets of old. I wonder what's in the wine to make me do that.

I'm reading a book about reading (my favorite subject) and the author is talking about poets. Not just any poets but the masters of romanticism. Rimbaud, Verlaine, Baudelaire. Poets that I used to read (in translation of course) and dream of passion and madness. Years ago I bought a greeting card that had the phrase "passion is a form of madness". I bought it for the saying. I was a young romantic. I wanted that passion. I wanted to be that starving artist living in a garret, selling poems to buy cheap red wine and a meal that night. Some night (like tonight) I still do.

But as I read this book I remembered a picture. I don't know if I've posted it here before and I know that tonight I won't be able to describe why this photo pierced my soul. Why I printed a copy and moved it from house to house. Why it used to sit above my writing desk. The simplest explanation is that this photo (by Felix Nadar in 1856) captured the passion and madness of Charles Baudelaire. I've loved this photo my entire life. From the moment I first saw it I loved it. I knew I needed to have a copy. I can't really explain way. It's terrible quality. It's blurry and odd, but I love it. Something about it speaks to me. And some days I understand what it's saying.

Poetry Friday

The first book of poems I ever purchased was A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far by Adrienne Rich. It was a tiny slim volume of poetry wrapped in a bright pink cover. And I remember thinking how small and thin it was. Until I opened it. This tiny volume was filled with passion and anger and politics and beauty. It was everything good poetry should be. I read a lot of Rich's work in college and loved most of it. She died on Tuesday. This is my way of a memorial.

Diving Into the Wreck (a poem that became even better once I started diving)
by Adrienne Rich

First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
abourd the sun-flooded schooner
but here alone.

There is a ladder.
The ladder is always there
hanging innocently
close to the side of the schooner.
We know what it is for,
we who have used it.
Otherwise
it is a piece of maritime floss
some sundry equipment.

I go down.
Rung after rung and still
the oxygen immerses me
the blue light
the clear atoms
of our human air.
I go down.
My flippers cripple me,
I crawl like an insect down the ladder
and there is no one
to tell me where the ocean
will begin.

First the air is blue and tehn
it is bluer and then green and then
black I am blacking out and yet
my mask is powerful
it pumps my blood with power
the sea is another story
the sea is not a question of power
I have to learn alone
to turn my body without force
in the deep element.

And now: it is easy to forget
what I came for
among so many who have always
lived here
swaying their crenellated fans
between the reefs
and besides
you breath differently down here.

I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purpose.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
I stroke the beam of my lamp
slowly along the flank
of something more permanent
than fish or weed

the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative hunters.

This is the place.
And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
streams black, the merman in his armored body.
We circle silently
about the wreck
we dive into the hold.
I am she: I am he

whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes
whose breasts still bear the stress
whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
obscurely inside barrels
half-wedged and left to rot
we are the half-destroyed instruments
that once held to a course
the water-eaten log
the fouled compass

We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a book, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.

Poetry Friday

It was my father's birthday yesterday. My father is the one who introduced me to poetry in general and specific poets in particular. I've learned to love the poetric rhymes and phrasings because of him. So this poetry friday is for my dad. It's from one of the new poets he has just recently introduced me to. This poem made both of us laugh until we cried. You can either read the poem here or watch Billy Collins read it here. (sorry about the advertisment.)

The Lanyard
by Billy Collins

The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly--
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that's what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and her is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift--not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

Poetry Friday

I feel a bit like I'm cheating doing another Poetry Friday. I've been bad about posting recently and poems are generally easy. But then I thought...hey it's my blog. And I want to post a poem.

I love Neil Gaiman. I love his stories, I love his blog, and I love his poetry. I've only found one thing he's written that I didn't like and considering how much he's written that's pretty incredible. This poem makes me giggle so of course it makes me ridiculously happy.

The Day the Saucers Came
by Neil Gaiman

That day, the saucers landed. Hundreds of them, golden,
silent, coming down from the sky like great snowflakes,
and the people of Earth stood and stared as they descended,
waiting, dry-mouthed to find what waited inside for us
and none of us knowing if we would be here tomorrow,
but you didn't notice it because

That day, the day the saucers came, by some coincidence,
was the day that the graves gave up their dead
and the zombies pushed up through soft earth
or erupted, shambling and dull-eyed, unstoppable,
came towards us, the living, and we screamed and ran,
but you did not notice this because

On the saucer day, which was the zombie day, it was
Ragnarok also, and the television screens showed us
a ship built of dead-men's nails, a serpent, a wolf,
all bigger than the mind could hold, and the cameraman could
not get far enough away, and then the Gods came out
but you did not see them coming because

On the saucer-zombie-battling gods day the floodgates broke
and each of us was engulfed by genies and sprites
offering us wishes and wonders and eternities
and charm and cleverness and true brave hearts and pots of gold
while giants feefofummed across the land, and killer bees,
but you had no idea of any of this because

That day, the saucer day the zombie day
the Ragnarok and fairies day, the day the great winds came
and snows, and the cities turned to crystal, the day
all plants died, plastics dissolved, the day the
computers turned, the screens telling us we would obey, the day
angels, drunk and muddled, stumbled from the bars,
and all the bells of London were sounded, the day
animals spoke to us in Assyrian, the Yeti day,
the fluttering capes and arrival of the Time Machine day,
you didn't notice any of this because

you were sitting in your room, not doing anything
not even reading, not really, just
looking at your telephone,
wondering if I was going to call.

Poetry Friday

It's Friday and we are sitting on the edge of a snow storm. Nothing major but after the winter we've had, even the slightest snow feels like a betrayal. I have no reason to complain though. It's been the best January ever. Warm and dry. I've been in heaven.

Even with the nice weather I've been hibernating. I go home and make tea and curl up on the sofa to read. I have a stack of books at home from the library that I'm planning to get through this weekend. I can't seem to leave the library without at least a dozen. I'm reading at a frantic rate. It's been a blissful winter so far.

And today I stumbled on a poem that makes me smile. I figured I would share. It's right up my alley for obvious reasons.

My First Memory (of Librarians)
by Nikki Giovanni

This is my first memory:
A big room with heavy wooden tables that sat on a creaky wood floor
A line of green shades--banker's lightes--down the center
Heavy oak chairs that were too low or maybe I was simply too short
                For me to sit in and read
So my first book was always big

In the foyer up four steps a semi-circle desk presided
To the left side the card catalogue
On the right newspapers draped over what looked like a quilt rack
Magazines face out from the wall

The welcoming smile of my librarian
The anticipation in my heart
All those books--another world--just waiting
At my fingertips.

Poetry Friday

I disappear sometimes. Like a magician, I make myself invisible to the world outside. I hide at home, in books, and don't return phone calls. All of my sisters do this occasionally. We get used to each others disappearances. The important thing is that we always find our way back. We always reappear.

The Art of Disappearing
by Naomi Shihab Nye

When they say Don't I know you?
say no.

When they invite you to a party
remember what parties are like
before answering.
Someone telling you in a loud voice
they once wrote a poem.
Greasy sausage balls on a paper plate.
Then reply.

If they say We should get together
say why?

It's not that you don't love them anymore.
You're trying to remember something
too important to forget.
Trees. The monastery bell at twilight.
Tell them you have a new project.
It will never be finished.

When someone recognizes you in a grocery store
nod briefly and become a cabbage.
When someone you haven't seen in ten years
appears at your door.
don't start singing him all your new songs.
You will never catch up.

Walk around feeling like a leaf.
Know you could tumble any second.
Then decide what to do with your time.

Kipling's Mongoose

I read The Jungle Books at a young age. I was probably ten or so when I discovered Kipling's world of wolves, tigers, snakes, and man-cubs. Of friendly panthers and troublesome villagers. And of course the poetry. It was the poetry that stayed with me the most. Shortly after reading the story of Mowgli, I had memorized the opening poem.

"Now Rann the Kite brings home the night
that Mang the Bat sets free.
The herds are shut in byre and hut
for loosed till dawn are we.
This is the hour of pride and power
of talon and tusk and claw.
Oh hear the call--good hunting all
Who keep the jungle law."

I'm not sure why the poem stuck with me but it did. I enjoy Kipling. I know that his reputation in the last couple decades has slipped. He seems antiquated with his colonial views. But he was a master with words. I was reminded of how good when I stumbled on the animated film of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, a Chuck Jones cartoon that I'd loved as a child. And of course I had read Kipling's story as part of The Jungle Books. I watched the cartoon and then went back to read the story. Like How The Grinch Stole Christmas, Chuck Jones stayed incredibly true to the source material. Most of the dialogue and all of the narration are taken directly from the story. Even the Tailorbird's song is faithfully reproduced. The only thing missing is the opening poem. I had tried to memorize the poem years ago. And when I re-read the story I remembered why. It is wonderful.

For reference Red-Eye is Rikki because of his red eyes before striking. Wrinkle-Skin is Nag, the cobra.

At the hole where he went in
Red-Eye called to Wrinkle-Skin.
Hear what little Red-Eye saith:
'Nag, come up and dance with death!'

Eye to eye and head to head,
       (Keep the measure, Nag)
This shall end when one is dead;
       (At thy pleasure, Nag.)
Turn for turn and twist for twist--
       (Run and hide thee, Nag.)
Hah! The hooded Death has missed!
       (Woe betide thee, Nag.)

Poetry Friday

I've had picture books on the brain a lot recently, for a number of different reasons. Partly because I'm driving out tonight to pick up my favorite picture book of all time (The Library by Sarah Stewart and David Small) that I ordered from my local bookstore. Second because of my children's book blog. The third reason I hope to tell you about soon but I'm trying hard not to write or think about at the moment.

We also had our first real taste of snow yesterday and today I just want to hibernate. I was reminded last night how much I hate winter. When the snow starts to fly I just want to stay indoors, curl up under a blanket, read, sip cocoa, and hibernate. What better way to do that than with a poem about both picture books and winter.

Picture-Books in Winter
by Robert Louis Stevenson

Summer fading, winter comes—
Frosty mornings, tingling thumbs
Window robins, winter rooks,
And the picture story-books.

Water now is turned to stone
Nurse and I can walk upon;
Still we find the flowing brooks
In the picture story-books.

All the pretty things put by,
Wait upon the children's eye,
Sheep and shepherds, trees and crooks,
In the picture story-books.

We may see how all things are,
Seas and cities, near and far,
And the flying fairies' looks,
In the picture story-books.

How am I to sing your praise,
Happy chimney-corner days,
Sitting safe in nursery nooks,
Reading picture story-books?

Poetry Friday

I've been scatterbrained lately. I find myself writing notes as reminders and then forgetting where I put the notes. I have a post-it filled with blog ideas on it but I seem to have lost it. Time for a good housecleaning. So instead you get a poem. It's aptly titled "We Forget".

We forget

The romances of childhood
The stories that seem endless,
that pull us in, until we too
stand with Peter Pan, gazing in wonder
At a place too perfect to be imaginary

We forget
The roses and thorns of youth
Where every possible slight
Becomes catastrophe
And nothing seems real
Nothing seems possible

We forget
Our first tastes of freedom
The rush that comes with
Letting our parents let us go
As we step into something
Far greater than ourselves.

We forget
The first blush
When attraction turns from lust
Into something far deeper
Something stronger than moon
Or tides. Something eternal.

We forget

Early Poetry Friday

I know I'm early for Friday but I'm out of time for any real posting today. So instead you get a poem.

Go Placidly
I'm not sure who the author is. Anyone know?
[Edit: Thanks to Partly Cloudy Knitter I now know that the poem is called Desiderata (Latin of course) and was written by Max Ehrmann in 1927. Thanks for the enlightenment!]

Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
And remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly & clearly;
and listen to others,
even the dull & ignorant;
they too have their story.

Avoid loud & aggressive persons,
they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain & bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.

Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing future of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs;
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals;
and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself.
Especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love;
for in the face of all aridity & disenchantment
it is perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue & loneliness.

Beyond wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees & the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be,
and whatever your labours & aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery & broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.

Be cheerful.

Strive to be happy.

Poetry Friday

I know I posted already today but I've been wanting to post this poem for a long time now. This is a poem that I read years ago when I was in college and the first two lines have stuck in my head for well over a decade. I was young and inexperienced and this poem impacted me in ways I couldn't understand at the time. It is not for small children or the prudish.

Sex Without Love
by Sharon Olds

How do they do it, the ones who make love
without love? Beautiful as dancers,
gliding over each other like ice-skaters
over the ice, fingers hooked
inside each other's bodies, faces
red as steak, wine, wet as the
children at birth whose mothers are going to
give them away. How they come to the
come to the come to the God come to the
still waters, and not love
the one who came there with them, light
rising slowly as steam off their joined
skin? These are the true religious,
the purists, the pros, the ones who will not
accept a false Messiah, love the
priest instead of the God. They do not
mistake the lover for their own pleasure,
they are like great runners: they know they are alone
with the road surface, the cold, the wind,
the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio-
vascular health--just factors, like the partner
in the bed, and not the truth, which is the
single body alone in the universe
against its own best time.

Poetry Friday

It's been a long time since I posted a poem to the blog. I've been missing Poetry Fridays. And since my last post was so rambling and incoherent, I figured I would share a very beautiful and sparse little poem that touches me every time I read it. I read poetry and books and discover the secret on a regular basis. But I always forget.

The Secret
by Denise Levertov

Two girls discover
the secret of life
in a sudden line of
poetry.

I who don't know the
secret wrote
the line. They
told me

(through a third person)
they had found it
but not what it was
not even

what line it was. No doubt
by now, more than a week
later, they have forgotten
the secret,

the line, the name of
the poem. I love them
for finding what
I can't find,

and for loving me
for the line I wrote,
and for forgetting it
so that

a thousand times, till death
finds them, they may
discover it again, in other
lines

in other
happenings. And for
wanting to know it,
for

assuming there is
such a secret, yes
for that
most of all.

Poetry Wednesday

Because I feel like it. I never seem to post on Fridays anymore so today will be a Poetry Wednesday. It rained yesterday and for some odd reason I felt like going out hiking. I've been enjoying the rain (mostly because it isn't snow) and am feeling very energetic. I've been waking up earlier and earlier on the weekends and going out walking. I've walk through snow and rain and mud and clear blue days. But unlike my poem for the day, one of the few times I don't walk is at night. Not sure why, I just hate walking in the evenings.

But it's still a great poem.

Acquainted With the Night

by Robert Frost

I have been one acquainted with the night.

I have walked out in rain--and back in rain.

I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.

I have passed by the watchman on his beat

And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet

When far away an interrupted cry

Came over houses from another street.

But not to call me back or say good-by;

And further still at an unearthly height

One luminary clock against the sky.

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.

I have been one acquainted with the night.

Poetry Tuesday

I was never much of a flirt until I got married. Suddenly I went from quiet shy introverted Cat to a much more outgoing version of myself. While I'm far from extroverted, I am willing to open up and put myself out there a bit more. I'm willing to step out of my comfort zone and meet people. And now I find myself thinking about all that time I wasted not flirting or talking. All that fear and uncertainty that was misplaced.

Andrew Marvell tries to talk his Mistress into bed in this bawdy poem. Like Robert Merrick's immortal call to "Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May" in his poem To The Virgins, To Make Much of Time, Marvell urges to seize the day (and the sheets). It's a good lesson for every part of life, not just sex. Time is short, make much of life.

To His Coy Mistress

by Andrew Marvell

Had we but World enough, and Time,
This coyness Lady were no crime.
We would sit down, and think which way
To walk, and pass our long Loves Day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges side.
Should'st Rubies find: I by the Tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood:
And you should if you please refuse
Till the Conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable Love should grow
Vaster then Empires, and more slow.
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine Eyes, and on thy Forehead Gaze.
Two hundred to adore each Breast.
But thirty thousand to the rest.
An Age at least to every part,
And the last Age should show your Heart.
For Lady you deserve this State;
Nor would I love at lower rate.
But at my back I alwaies hear
Times winged Charriot hurrying near:
And yonder all before us lye
Desarts of vast Eternity.
Thy Beauty shall no more be found;
Nor, in thy marble Vault, shall sound
My ecchoing Song: then Worms shall try
That long preserv'd Virginity:
And your quaint Honour turn to durst;
And into ashes all my Lust.
The Grave's a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace.
Now therefore, while the youthful hew
Sits on thy skin like morning glew,
And while thy willing Soul transpires
At every pore with instant Fires,
Now let us sport us while we may;
And now, like am'rous birds of prey,
Rather at once our Time devour,
Than languish in his slow-chapt pow'r.
Let us roll all our Strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one Ball:
And tear our Pleasures with rough strife,
Thorough the Iron gates of Life.
Thus, though we cannot make our Sun

Stand still, yet we will make him run.