The Poetry of This Moment

Here comes summer with all its warm nights and whispers, the glow of televisions in windows up and down the block.  The heat never fully leaves, but the dawn brings some cool relief, damp and full of promise.  These are the nights I stay up late, reading, thinking, considering the stars.

The struggle comes with the switch to summer living.  I am not good with down time.  I crave the pressure, the busyness of a full daily schedule.  Then summer hits, and suddenly things slow a bit, switch tempo, start a new song.  And I am left out of the dance.

I have projects waiting, writing to be done, but somehow, I wander through the days.  Evening comes and I wonder where the time went.  Meanwhile, others around me are busy.  Not everyone’s life slows down with summer.

One of the hardest things for us to do is live in the moment.  The Book of Ecclesiastes tells us:  “One generation passes and another comes, but the world forever stays.  The sun rises and the sun goes down; then it presses on to the place where it rises.  Blowing now toward the south then toward the north, the wind turns again and again, resuming its rounds.  All rivers go to the sea, yet never does the sea become full.  To the place where they go, the rivers keep on going.  All speech is labored; there is nothing man can say.  The eye is not satisfied with seeing nor is the ear filled with hearing.”

That is the feeling of summer for me:  “my eye is not satisfied.”  It is not because there is nothing to see; I am simply not seeing it, because I miss the storms of winter.  It is the paradox of life that we try to see the whole of years instead of the moments that add up to the making.  So I am trying, against my nature, to see the moments, or moment, the poetry of this moment.  That is the message of this summer for me:  the poetry of this moment.  I must fully absorb and appreciate it while it lasts because far too quickly, the summer days will be gone, the fall of the year will come, and another season will begin.