(no subject)

[fifi-bonsai.livejournal.com]

Okay. I read a poem a long time ago about this guy who's just chilling on a hammock or some other reclining thing, maybe even a rocking chair, I think. I just had this image in my mind that he was. It's a really pleasant setting with nature and birds and the sky, that type of quiet poem where you think the author is trying to be Buddha and lull you to sleep. It's all contemplative and zen. Then at the end he says something about having wasted his life? It's jarring because the ambiance is so laid back and tranquil and then this sucker punch.

Thanks for any help finding it. Sry to be so vague.

Comments

[echo-echo-echo.livejournal.com]

Lying In a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota
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.

[fifi-bonsai.livejournal.com]

Thank you! That was prompt. If only there are a -request tag for everything else in my life. Too cool.

[echo-echo-echo.livejournal.com]

I knew the poem right away. It's a great poem.

[fifi-bonsai.livejournal.com]

It is. <3

[cimeara.livejournal.com]

Interesting poem!

Because you could also read it as "why the hells haven't I spent more time like this, lying in a hammock, instead of rushing around at my regular job?"

Or even as, "this is what most people would say, that I've wasted my life by spending all day in this hammock, but have I?"

Instead of "this is what's around me, life moving in pathways, and I'm here, stuck."

[beebox.livejournal.com]

"why the hells haven't I spent more time like this, lying in a hammock, instead of rushing around at my regular job?"
that's how I read it, actually. and I like the poem better that way.

[fifi-bonsai.livejournal.com]

I like it better with all the doom behind it. Because most shit out there is "why the hells haven't I spent more time like this" and "people would say I've wasted my life lying in hammock" because that goes against the culture of do and do and do. This poem says that there's no safety in do and no safety in not do. That Paolo Coelho's thoughts about the Universe conspiring could be no more than mind farts. That the people who feel superior because they've spent the time to "taste" life are in as much danger of wasting the goddamned thing as those who've spent their time gobbling it up. I love that. :D