Daylight Savings…

I admit that I am sensitive: to words, to actions, to energies. I am a Cancer. We are, by nature, sensitive to all things almost to a fault, and shifts in time, at least for me, are not excluded. Last night, most clocks “sprung” forward an hour, just one hour. And in the grander scheme of things, what is an hour, really? Right? But that loss of an hour to my circadian rhythm is the equivalent of a day. Perhaps, even, more like a week.

I woke up this morning with this inner nagging that I was missing something. And it seemed like I was missing so much more than an hour. That hour could have been spent with a chapter or two of a good book, a cup of spearmint tea too hot to drink, in the arms of my lover as we contemplate all the promises of spring: grass growing greener day by day, buds emerging on the lilac bushes, sprouts on the sugar maple despite its dying from the inside out.

I must make a concerted effort not to squander so much of my time.

Which reminds me of one of my favorite poems ever written…

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Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota

by James Wright

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,
Asleep on the black trunk,
Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down 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.