Planning

Planning is the best part.
It reminds you that you have control.

No thing is as wonderful as your imagination suggested,
so if you must suffer through the hours of disappointment,
why not take the pleasure of the Plan?

The boredom of a party is the price you pay
For the hours of playful freedom you spend with the menu.

The humiliation of a wedding is worth more—
at least six months of monograms and plane tickets.

A baby isn’t half the fun its name is;
the same principle applies to travel, to husbands, to careers.

You know it doesn’t really matter if you follow the Plan—
the Plan exists only for the joy of its creation—
Stay home from the wedding and make more Plans.

And since you’ve planned every event in your life,
why not plan your death?

Lay it out in inky rows
on the clean white paper.
Tie up all the strings that dangle
around the neat brown package.

You know… you have no obligation to follow the Plan…

Thanks

I was saved

by the gray-brown bark
the flowing water on the rock,
and the face-warming sunlight.

And though I sit now with frozen, clumsy hands,
and read and understand the words of Sylvia Plath,
I am not in danger,

for you are with me.

And though I had it planned in detail that would please the most noble eye
and said no word and thought of nothing else that morning,
by afternoon I was saved.

May this holy remedy never lose its potency for me.

I have sampled it again
and it has gone a good way toward healing

A pleasant warmth!

I wish to thank
the sun, the moon,
and the Prime Mover.

Incompletion

I cannot finish anything,
So it does not matter if my beginnings are good.
I must finish something before I die,
Or my life, which had so much potential, will be meaningless.
The tremors in my body make me fear
That such a time may come very soon.
The future is indistinct and colorless—
Nothing is there.
I want to cry out with frustration,
But I have no strength.

I fear to wait,
But perhaps tomorrow...

Summer Afternoon

It is the first day of summer.
The sun is a heavy, thick quilt
That lies over the world to keep out the morning’s noise.
Tiny violets peek unassumingly out from the ivy.
The branches of the trees are free;
They laugh again as they stretch toward the sky.
People have come out to sit on the quickened, vibrant grass,
And the wind is a gentle lady.

Why can I think only
Of my own death?

Warmth

I stand outside, and it is warm,
And I feel power moving through
The sturdy weapons—strong—my hands.
I have completed all my chores,
And it feels good to start anew.
The sunshine’s brilliance of demands
Into my eyelids fiercely pours.
I look toward it, take the pain:
Its warmth is floating, and it lands
Upon my face and draws outdoors
The secrets that we all contain.
And I feel power moving in
My sturdy arms, as strong as wars
That scrape the earth with each campaign.
I have completed all within,
And it feels good to be fulfilled.
The air is warm as sugarcane.
I want to follow and begin
To be outside and then to build.
I look toward the sun and feel
The pain that signals mortal sin.
Inside, my warden, hushed and stilled,
Pulls closed the curtains to conceal
The outside power rushing by.
No one knows what is instilled
By nature in my heartless mind.
There is not one who fathoms why.
Then something stirs inside my frame,
And I feel earth all intertwined,
And I feel power moving by
My sturdy back, my steady name.
Forever I desire that warmth.