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April 21, 2016

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Photography, Poetry

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Pause

Fritillary butterfly with black stripes and white spots

A moment to test the air,
pause and consider,
plan where to go next.
Is that a text? Dang!
Email skirmish,
phone rings, text again.
Where was I? Oh, yes.
Reflecting on now.
Oh, no! I forgot that
promise I made.
Why did I make that?
Deadline, just in time.
Flit, flutter, flee.
Another moment,
where was I? Bedtime.

Copyright 2016 Brenda Davis Harsham

Notes:

It amazes me that even on vacation, this is how I feel. Only even more frantic. Perhaps it’s common to all of us. Regardless, may we all find magic, in the cracks and the in-between.

Thanks to Jama at Jama’s Alphabet Soup for hosting Poetry Friday this week. She is the Bard of Food Poetry, the Countess of Culinary Verse. She’s featuring a passover poem today, an excerpt from Laura Shovan’s new middle grade novel, The Last Fifth Grade at Emerson Elementary.

Blessings, Brenda

42 thoughts on “Pause”

  1. I think you summed it all up in your poem – perhaps we have too much going on in our lives? I certainly feel like that too, and I’ve only myself to look after. I try and limit the texts and emails I send so I don’t get too many back! There never seems enough time in the day, so the silliest of things can become a stress! 🙂 I’m sure the butterfly has an easier life, but I guess a very short one.

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  3. The other day my husband and I both went in town to dinner without our cellphones. It was almost as distracting NOT to have them for awhile. Then when we got used to the fact that we were out on our own with no life preservers, no way to communicate…it was great. We are such a fluttery society now. Not sure we are doing ourselves any good!
    Your poem was a perfect expression of our hectic, distracted lives!

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    • Thanks, Donna. I wish my husband and I didn’t feel leashed. We don’t go anywhere without them with our three kids potentially needing us any second. We try hard not to encourage any one else to need our instant reactions, though. 🙂

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  4. Your poem flutters and pauses, just like a butterfly. Maybe they feel as distracted as we do! And really, it wouldn’t do for either them or us to be in perpetual pause, so maybe we should just embrace the flutter (as long as we remember to savor the pause).

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    • Good points. The nectar over there really is sweeter than here. Until we get there. It’s that moment of deciding where to go next that is the true magic, not arriving. It’s the anticipation and hope that make us so alive.

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  8. Brenda, the pause that you write about is so needed. Those emails and interruptions break the concentration we seek and lead us astray many times. Your poem accurately depicts that. The photo is stunning.

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  9. Flitter, flutter all through the day, just as your ‘lively’ poem tells. I’m still surprised at how it goes now that I’m retired, and supposed to have more time! I love those “in-betweens”, Brenda.

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  10. What a gorgeous photo! Especially like “flit, flutter, flee” — speaks to me of fleeting moments, lucky moments of captured beauty, the reminder to be still. With the butterfly, so lightly we go, so gentle the heart.

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  11. Your poem is successful at capturing that feeling, the distractedness, flurry, disappointment. Appropriate for Earth Day in that we need to step away from the devices to reconnect with our surroundings!

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  14. I’m on vacation here as well and as today is Friday, I feel a rising sense of panic that school starts back so soon. Where did the time go!? I’ve luxuriated in the feeling of days stretching before me with flexible agendas or with no agenda at all. I love your line “may we all find magic, in the cracks and the in-between.” I also love the idea of e-mails skirmishing–I’ve been fighting my own e-mail battle over break, striving to rid my Inbox of hundreds of past messages–okay, thousands. Enjoy this final weekend of break and thanks for sharing!

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  15. I can SO so identify with this my friend…not enough pauses. More stops needed to just pause and smell the roses! I do hope you had a good night’s sleep. Getting busy here with gardening so not going to be able to keep up as well as I would have liked with all your lovely new posts. I will do my best over the next few months…. Summer draws near… 🙂

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  18. Happy Summer Vacation, soon I imagine! 🙂 How time flies and it never ceases to amaze me!
    I like this butterfly with a pause to rest on this lovely, contrasting leaf. Bedtime is past for me. Early 4:30 am alarm comes way too soon.

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