I’d Better Work Hard So Later I Can Play

Some days, the thoughts I think
Line up like singers in a talent show.
Today is such a day.

If only I could walk and write!
But duty I put off too long
Now binds me to my desk.

I went to bed last night with a friend’s poem on my mind. Combine that with my having just wrapped up designing the cover of a Spanish book (more about that later) and I really did have the dream I describe below. I also woke up this morning with the dread of having to make up for months of procrastination: with taxes due in just a few days, I’ll be putting in a marathon of accounting and tax preparation. Such a situation seems to fire up my creative side, apparently desperate to justify yet another day of procrastination. I got up and jotted down the following lines with barely any thought:

The Dream I Had Last Night

The dream I had last night…
(So very strange!)
Was all about the title of a book
Spelled out like corn maze
On the spine of hillside’s gentle slope.
My friends and I descended
One by one, or sometimes all together
Through those living words.
But only as the day grew long
And air a bit more cool
Did we slow down enough
To fill that shape and take its form.

And then I woke, with this in mind:
That I — along with friends —
AM being formed
By process hard to get my head around.
AM being formed
By One who wrote the book
And knows its title well.

Don’t ask too many questions
For answers I don’t know:
“This ‘book,’ and ‘title’ —
What are they?”
I only know
I’m being formed
By One who wrote the book
And knows the answers well.