A Comic Warning to Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May

It's that time of the year when people tend to take stock and exclaim, "I can't believe it's almost 20--!" or in my case, "I can't believe it's not 1998!"  When we begin a new year, for the first few weeks for some strange reason, I tend to revert back to the 90s when writing dates.  Clearly I have issues but apparently I'm not the only one as this meme clearly shows:

I can't believe there's even a FB page centered around that sentiment.  Ahem!  The following poems encourage us not to put off that trip you've been meaning to take, the call you've been meaning to make, the issue you've been wanting to take care of, to take notice of the beauty around us, because you just never know what might happen.  Instead, let's "kiss the earth & be joyful/ & make much of your time/ & be kindly to everyone/ even to those who do not deserve it" (and believe you me that last one is hard!) and enter 2012 without all those shoulda/woulda/coulda's.

Notice

This evening, the sturdy Levi's

I wore every day for over a year

& which seemed to the end

in perfect condition,

suddenly tore.

How or why I don't know,

but there it was: a big rip at the crotch.

A month ago my friend Nick

walked off a racquetball court,

showered,

got into this street clothes,

& halfway home collapsed & died.

Take heed, you who read this,

& drop to your knees now & again

like the poet Christopher Smart,

& kiss the earth & be joyful,

& make much of your time,

& be kindly to everyone,

even to those who do not deserve it.

For although you may not believe

it will happen,

you too will one day be gone,

I, whose Levi's ripped at the crotch

for no reason,

assure you that such is the case.

Pass it on.

--Steve Kowit, from The Dumbbell Nebula (2000)

Picnic, Lightning

"My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when I was three."--Lolita

It is possible to be struck by a meteor
or a single-engine plane
while reading in a chair at home.
Safes drop from rooftops
and flatten the odd pedestrian
mostly within the panels of the comics,
but still, we know it is possible,
as well as the flash of summer lightning,
the thermos toppling over,
spilling out onto the grass.
And we know the message
can be delivered from within.
The heart, no valentine,
decides to quit after lunch,
the power shut off like a switch,
or a tiny dark ship is unmoored
into the flow of the body's rivers,
the brain a monastery,
defenseless on the shore.
This is what I think about
when I shovel compost
into a wheelbarrow,
and when I fill the long flower boxes,
then press into rows
the limp roots of red impatiens--
the instant hand of Death
always ready to burst forth
from the sleeve of his voluminous cloak.
Then the soil is full of marvels,
bits of leaf like flakes off a fresco,
red-brown pine needles, a beetle quick
to burrow back under the loam.
Then the wheelbarrow is a wilder blue,
the clouds a brighter white,
and all I hear is the rasp of the steel edge
against a round stone,
the small plants singing
with lifted faces, and the click
of the sundial

as one hour sweeps into the next.
--Billy Collins, Picnic, Lightning (1998)