Poetry Procrastination

It is fitting that a post about procrastination missed its Wednesday slot and has been sitting in the draft folder for some days.

From Merriam Webster dictionary , the definition of procrastinate is procrastinated; procrastinating transitive verb : to put off intentionally and habitually

Often procrastination is seen as a fault, even a moral failing. But what if it isn’t? What if it is simply a body and mind seeking rest and respite? The thought encouraged me to search for a poem to express this feeling, and I found ‘Wild Geese’, one of Mary Oliver’s most loved poems. Again, listen to the recording, it is one of those poems that really needs to be recited/heard.

Mary Jane Oliver (September 10, 1935 – January 17, 2019) was an American poet, born in Ohio in 1935. In 2007, she was declared the best-selling poet in the US by ‘The New York Times’. Influenced by both Whitman and Thoreau she took much of her inspiration from the natural world, (Ohio, New England and Provincetown), and her daily walks, for which she often carried a 3-by-5-inch hand-sewn notebook for recording impressions and phrases.

She is a poet that I would like to explore further.

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver ©️

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

I started this train of thought on a Sunday afternoon, when I was determined to write poetry, and instead did everything else, although that includes sorting poetry notes, so the train didn't completely leave the track, if I were to labour the metaphor. So let me disembark from the thought and the post with one of my poems from 'Sky Trees', and an invitation to write your own poem on the subject!

My life will be perfect if

I finish this poem.
Scribble on life,
wash the dishes, 
ponder the poem.

E-mail an answer, 
scan the poem,
think of the pans.

Scrub the simile, 
wonder on time,
forget the poem.

Spam this poem,
and my life 
might be perfect.

S.Abdallah ©️ 'Sky Trees' 2017