neglect

My blog has suffered during the winter and spring months, while my office life grew increasingly stressful and my smalll business life occupied more of my waking and sleeping attention. My kitchen has also suffered, as you can see by this poor sweet potato that branched out in search of appreciation elsewhere. A sweet potato. I've never seen a sweet potato sit unloved for so long that it sprouted.

Summer has finally arrived, and my best intentions for posting here are still suffering neglect. It's my hope that summer vacation will eventually penetrate to my bones and I'll start making regular posts, but I'm too wary for promises. I'm going to settle for hope. And in hope, I post a poem (the term "weekly" will have to be abandoned, clearly), that seems appropriate. In pursuit of keeping up with my life, it seems my awareness of my life may be one of the most obvious victims.

The Vacation

Once there was a man who filmed his vacation.
He went flying down the river in his boat
with his video camera to his eye, making
a moving picture of the moving river
upon which his sleek boat moved swiftly
toward the end of his vacation. He showed
his vacation to his camera, which pictured it,
preserving it forever: the river, the trees,
the sky, the light, the bow of his rushing boat
behind which he stood with his camera
preserving his vacation even as he was having it
so that after he had had it he would still
have it. It would be there. With a flick
of a switch, there it would be. But he
would not be in it. He would never be in it.

by Wendell Berry

Taken from Good Poems, edited by Garrison Keillor. "Wendell Berry is poet, essayist, novelist, farmer, environmentalist. 'Breathe with unconditioned breath the unconditioned air. Shun electric wire. Communicate slowly. Live a three-dimensional life; stay away from screens.'"