Saturday's Poem: The Gallop

The following poem by Jane Hirshfield felt especially appropriate today. My life has indeed been proceeding at a gallop lately, all of it coming on a little too fast, with maybe a bit too much of everything except time.And I've had many thoughts I wanted to write about that slipped away forgotten, never rendered even as blog posts, despite my best intentions.

Mostly I have been racing around in a frenzy, trying to get things done and preparing for my big trip next week. Yeah, that big trip. Come to think of it, there is likely to be a long-ish blogging hiatus while I am traveling, but hopefully I will return from Byzantium with many tales to tell of "what is past, or passing, or to come."

For now at least I'll keep our Saturday custom and pause for a poem before rushing on to the next thing. But not before crediting my delightful niece, Rose, for having created the Barbie rodeo pictured above -- I don't know if those are still happening, but apparently they were quite the rage for awhile. (I remember those toy-horse days with my own daughter. They too galloped away before I knew quite what was happening.)

And by this time next week I'll be in Istanbul! (Now that is a sentence I never dreamed I would write.)

THE GALLOP by Jane Hirshfield

There are days the whole house moves at a gallop.

Bookshelves and counters, bottles of aspirin and oil,

chairs, saucepans, and towels.

I can barely encircle the neck

of a bounding pen with my fingers

before it breaks free of their notions;

open the door before the dog

of lop-eared hopes leaps through it;

pick up the paper before it goes up as kindling.

Barely eat before something snatches